Race is an important conversation to DFM. We are undergoing an extensive research initiative to discover the lives of the enslaved in Inwood and Upper Manhattan. Head to our DyckmanDISCOVERED page for more information!
Join the Discussion . . .
One of the most important topics throughout history and today is the topic of race. We at the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum feel that it is important to have and to facilitate conversations on race, even though they can be challenging. Because of this, we have put together a series of talks with experts, each looking at the topic of race from a different perspective. Our hope is that we can all come together, learn from one another, and to continue the conversation.
SEPTEMBER 2022 SERIES
Thursday, September 14, 2022
The Impact of the Age of Exploration on What We Eat
Lavada Nahon
Thursday, September 21, 2022
Food Justice is More than Growing Food and Feeding People
Karen Washington
About the Talk:
For many the idea of decolonizing our lives, includes ‘eating like our ancestors’ but what if you have no idea what your ancestors ate? How far back does one look for those ‘ancestors’? When and how did the world’s foods get so mixed up? In this short program, culinary historian Lavada Nahon will look at the global food and eating exchanges of the 17th and 18th century and their lingering impact on what we eat today.
About the Talk:
People in poor urban and rural communities are told that if they want food security, all they have to do is grow their own vegetables, give up soda and exercise, as if, by magic, eating vegetables and drinking water are going to solve the problems in the food system, without looking at the institutional. environmental and structural determinants that reinforce racism in today’s society. How has the COVID-19 changed the way people now think?
Thursday, September 28, 2022
Here to Stir the Pot: TikTok as a Tool for Elevating Culture & Catalyzing Change
Ora Kemp
About the Talk:
Sprinkle, share, chop, crop, fold and follow; the recipe for a strong social media profile built to catalyze change is like perfecting a recipe. Some content requires a bit of spice, maybe a sweeter delivery, but the flavor needs to stay strong and pronounced, potent in its presentation and uniquely you. Every post is a calculated dose of decolonization, a delectable dissemination of digital decadence and an unfiltered taste of how food is ingrained in cultural traditions. Join us as we serve up social media as the amuse bouche for catalyzing change.
FEBRUARY / MARCH 2022 SERIES
Thursday, February 10th at 6pm
Museums Respond to the Demand for Social Justice: Are We Creating A Sustainable Mash Up?
Ms. Deborah Schwartz
About the Talk:
Some cultural institutions are setting their sights on democracy and social justice. What does it look like in our programming, our governance structures, and our community relationships?
In this talk, Ms. Schwartz will look at some well received examples of exhibitions, oral history projects, and community driven programs that reflect the current push to bring the forces of equity from the street into the hallowed halls of our museums. As our democracy is threatened will we face censorship? What will happen if funders tire of the push for equity? Together, we will talk about the challenges ahead for museums who would like to create a consistent and sustainable engagement with the moral and ethical dilemmas of our time.
Deborah Schwartz is an independent consultant, focused on good governance, community partnerships, and program planning for nonprofit cultural institutions. She also teaches in the Museum Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. From 2006 until 2020, Ms. Schwartz was President and CEO of Brooklyn Historical Society. Previously she served as the Edward John Noble Foundation Deputy Director for Education at the Museum of Modern Art, and Vice Director for Education and Program Development at the Brooklyn Museum.
Wednesday, February 16th at 6pm
Courageous Conversations
Mr. Ty Jones and Mr. Michael Dinwiddie
About the Talk:
A moderated discussion centered around the intersection of art and social justice. Seeking to uphold our founding commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, our goal is to foster community maintenance through art and conversation.
We create art, not for arts’ sake, but for the community. As such, we believe that the arts are the perfect forum to codify, message, and act upon the needs of the community – before those needs and concerns hit a tipping point.
NAACP Award Winner, Ty Jones is the OBIE Award Winning Producing Artistic Director of the Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH). Roles with CTH: Actor, Producer, and Board Chair. Under Jones’ leadership, CTH’s template of financial discipline, precision marketing, and exceptional programming, resulted in its growth and stability. Jones initiated Uptown Meets Downtown, a program comprising strategic partnerships with downtown theatres designed to share expenses and build artistic bridges between communities. He created Uptown Shakespeare in the Park, bringing free, professional theatre to Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park. Jones is a vet of 5 Broadway shows including Julius Caesar with Denzel Washington. Principal TV/film work include, When They See Us, Clifford the Big Red Dog, and best known as Agent Donovan on POWER.
Michael Dinwiddie is an associate professor of dramatic writing at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University. His teaching interests include Harlem Renaissance history, spoken word/rap/popular culture, ragtime music and African American theatre. An award-winning playwright and composer whose works have been produced in New York, regional and educational theatre, he is the editor of On Holy Ground: An Anthology of Plays and Monologues from the National Black Theatre, which will be published in 2022 by the Theatre Communications Group (TCG). Michael is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, and the Black Theatre Network.
Wednesday, February 23rd at 6pm
Flow y Movimiento in the Heights: Social Justice & Advocacy in High School
Susan Natacha Gonzalez and Beatriz Oliva
About the Talk:
The daily practice of social justice requires discerning the needs of those we serve. How can organizations assess, and respond to community demands to develop programs and provide support for participants and families? The provision of academic programs, non-traditional social-emotional and mental health services within the academic setting will be explored.
Susan Natacha Gonzalez is a bilingual (Spanish/English) artist, educator, and art therapist with 27 years of experience working in different settings such as schools, transitional housing spaces, and for community-based organizations. Susan began her work as an art therapist with individuals with disabilities and families in 1995. As an art therapist, she has experience with physical, emotional, cognitive disabilities, autism, and developmental delays on a long-term and short-term basis. In the past 5 years, Susan has led a Fresh Youth Initiative‘s Luperon High School program and mental health team in a collaborative school-based program that addresses recent immigrant students’ mental health, and education needs.
Beatriz Oliva provides crisis intervention, individual and group counseling to students and families, as well as youth development programming at FYI’s Luperon High School site. She has clinical and advocacy experience working with victims of undocumented survivors of domestic violence and childhood abuse, BIPOC LGBTQIA marginalization, and destigmatizing mental health issues within the Latinx community. Beatriz holds a master’s degree in mental health counseling from NYU and is currently pursuing a PhD in Social Work at Yeshiva University.
Wednesday, March 2nd at 6pm
The American Plate: Race, Place, Taste and the Future of Food Equity
Ms. Ora Kemp
About the Talk:
Sowed from seeds of fertile grounds, sweat drenched brows and broken backs, the flavors of the American plate are seasoned with slavery’s bitterness. Salted with segregation and smoked in stacks of racial injustice, the hunger pangs that linger in the gut of black and brown folks has fully grown into an insatiable desire for change.
The future of food equity will not be one carved by the unsavory nature of our past, but inspired by the diversity of our people and the places and spaces that shape and nurture us. Join us as we explore the American plate and the flavors that define the future of food equity.
Equity advocate and social change agent, Ora Kemp is the Director of Nutrition for NY Common Pantry‘s Live Healthy! team. She strives to blend scientific findings and social application to facilitate community development, committed to removing barriers to health and building sustainable resilience. She seeks opportunities to connect people with necessary resources and education; tools bolstered through promoting dignity and supporting self-sufficiency. Through her work leading the direct education and pse teams, they work as agents of change, dedicated to the equitable access to real food for all people.
This program is hosted in partnership with The Classical Theatre of Harlem.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the Honorable Ydanis Rodriguez, New York City Council, District 10, and the Manhattan Borough President’s Office. Additional funding is provided by TD Bank.
AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2021 SERIES
Wednesday, August 25th at 6pm
Bedtime Stories about Slavery and the Legacy it Left on this Nation
Mr. Joseph McGill
About the Talk:
What started as an attempt to bring much needed attention to extant slave dwellings, has evolved into a movement to change narratives at historic sites throughout the nation.
Eleven years ago, McGill spent a night in a slave cabin at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens where he is currently employed. Now, 25 states later and the District of Columbia, McGill has spent nights in over 150 slave dwellings. McGill is joined in these sleepovers by many people from across the nation. Join us as we delve deep into the campfire conversations that are conducted before the sleepovers occur.
Joseph McGill is a graduate of SC State University with a BA in Professional English. He is currently the History and Culture Coordinator at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston, SC. McGill is the Founder of the Slave Dwelling Project.
Wednesday, September 1st at 6pm
I Was Here: Reshaping the American Commemorative Landscape
Marjorie Guyon, Marshall Fields, Patrick J. Mitchell, Dr. Michael Preacely, Michael Baer, and Barry Darnell Burton
About the Talk:
Created by photographing contemporary African Americans as archetypal Ancestor Spirits, the Portraits invoke the Human Family – Man, Woman, Child, Mother, Father, Sister, Brother.
These emblematic Ancestor Spirits Portraits ask us to examine who we are to each other, who we are as a nation and how we can work to heal the wound that enslavement created in our citizenship. The project is a synthesis of history, image, geography, and soundscape creating an opportunity for citizens of all ages to come face to face and heart to heart with a spiritual history rarely, if ever, encountered on the streets of America.
Born in NYC, Guyon’s work and public projects appear in public and private collections across the United States. Her work is at once both contemporary and ancient – a blend of mythology and graffiti. Her long standing gallery affiliations with George N’Namdi and David Lusk placed her work with collectors and institutions across the country. In 2009, she began a pivot into public projects – moving from the private space of the gallery, museum and university to create on the street museums in public space.
Marshall has spent the last 20 years working in Learning and Development. He serves as a communication broker through corporate training, a magazine columnist, podcast host and community liaison for an award-winning spirit project I Was Here. His belief is that “We can change your world by changing how you talk to it.” It is this belief that drives all of his engagements including the development of the F.R.E.E.D.O.M. from racism training: an online course that uses communication to overcome race.
Patrick J Mitchell is an international award winning Photojournalist from New York City. He has been published in several books (Anthology of Appalachian Writers) and articles (Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine. The Breona Taylor Billboard installation). Documenting present day life and using human emotion to tell life’s stories with his images. He has been exhibited in several states across the country including The Lyric Theater, Arthouse and Purdue Cultural Center.
American baritone Michael Preacely is a rising star on the operatic stage and is also known for a versatile singing ability and style that allow him to cross between genres from classical repertoire to pop, contemporary, and Broadway. Mr. Preacely has performed with many major and regional opera houses and orchestras in the United States and abroad. Currently, Mr. Preacely is working on the release of his first album, Spirituals and Hymns, followed by a series of concerts and recitals in various venues across the United States.
Michael Baer is the the President and Owner of Fusioncorp and PIVT where they focus on areas of Creative Design, Web, Application Development and Creating immersive experiences utilizing Augmented Reality. Michael sits on the board of the City of Lexington Jobs Fund Initiative, The Chamber of Commerce, The Muhammad Ali Center, Bluegrass Community and Technical College and the Technology Association of the Bluegrass.
Barry Darnell Burton, one of the models for the Ancestor Spirit Portraits is a resident of Lexington Ky. His family has traced roots in Lexington back to 1840 before which there is no information. Along with his physical image, he is also the installation technician for tapestry portraits and the author of “Where Do I Begin” the signature blessing that accompanies installation of the project.
Wednesday, September 8th at 6pm
Markers on the Land: Slavery, Commemoration and the History of Africans in Northern Manhattan
Dr. Robert W. Snyder, Peggy King Jorde, Dr. Andrea Mosterman, and Richard Tomczak
About the Talk:
With changes contemplated for an African burial ground and Native American ritual site in Inwood, join us for a panel discussion on the history of slavery at Dyckman House, in New Amsterdam, and in the early years of the United States. How might we best study this past and commemorate it in the present?
Robert W. Snyder is Manhattan Borough Historian, professor emeritus of journalism and American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark, and the author of Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York and the coauthor of All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants and the Making of New York. He is a former Fulbright lecturer in American Studies in South Korea and a member of the New York Academy History.
Peggy King Jorde is a Cultural Projects Consultant, global preservation expert & activist, a documentary film participant, & producer, and a Harvard Loeb Fellow recognized for her extraordinary leadership in saving the New York African Burial Ground and other endangered sites.
Andrea Mosterman is associate professor in Atlantic History and Joseph Tregle Professor in Early American History at the University of New Orleans. In her work, she explores the multi-faceted dimensions of slavery, slave trade, and cross-cultural contact in the Dutch Atlantic and Early America with special emphasis on Early New York. Her forthcoming book Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York, which is coming out this fall with Cornell Press, has won the 2020 Hendricks Award for best book-length manuscript related to New Netherland and the Dutch colonial experience.
Richard Tomczak is a professor and Proposal Development Coordinator at Stony Brook University
Wednesday, September 22nd at 6pm
“Troubled Like the Restless Sea”: Frederick Douglass and the “Profusion of Luxury” in Early America
Dr. R. Ruthie Dibble and Dr. Tiffany Momon
About the Talk:
Over 150 years after the publication of My Bondage and My Freedom, Frederick Douglass’s rhetorical genius still offers new insights into American art and history. Co-curators Drs. Ruthie Dibble and Tiffany Momon illuminate how a passage from Douglass’s autobiography became the basis of a collaborative curatorial intervention at the Milwaukee Art Museum that explores the troubled status of luxury goods in early America.
Douglass’s words, along with those of other writers who bore witness to the injustices that shaped luxury goods in early America, offer new ways to think about the intersections of slavery, settler colonialism, and the “profusion of luxury” that filled many American homes in the 1800s. Prompted by Douglas’s observation that luxury goods of enslaver households were “Troubled, like the restless sea,” the speakers will explore how undercurrents of power and profit shaped iconic examples of luxury goods, from the first porcelain made in America to the ornate furniture crafted in New York City for Cuban plantations.
Dr. R. Ruthie Dibble is an art historian and the Curator of The Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, an organization dedicated to the study and interpretation of early American material culture. Her curatorial and scholarly work explores the role of craft in the creation of assertion of individual, colonial, and national identities in early America.
Dr. Tiffany Momon is a public historian and Assistant Professor at Sewanee: The University of the South, and founder and co-director of the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive (blackcraftspeople.org), a black digital humanities project that centers black craftspeople, their lives, and their contributions to the making and building of America. Throughout her career, Momon has lectured on the subject of black craftspeople at organizations such as the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, and others.
Wednesday, September 15th at 6pm
‘A Long Time Coming’: The Archaeology and History of the Native and African American Community in Setauket, NY
Dr. Christopher Matthews
About the Talk:
This presentation will discuss recent archaeology and community-based research focused on the mixed-heritage Native American and African American community in Setauket, on Long Island, NY. The talk will explore this history of this community, highlighting their long struggle to persist despite consistent and intensifying racism and displacement.
New research involving archaeology, oral history, and archival research challenge existing historical narratives that predominate in the region and establishes a new understanding of this place as historically diverse and unique. This work draws from Prof. Matthews’ new book A Struggle for Heritage: Archaeology and Civil Rights in a Long Island Community.
Christopher Matthews is a professor of anthropology at Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ. He is an expert on the archaeological study of race and racism and social inequality in the mid-Atlantic as well as critical heritage studies and community-based research. After earning his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University he has gone on to publish several books including An Archaeology of History and Tradition, The Archaeology of American Capitalism, and, most recently, A Struggle for Heritage: Archaeology and Civil Rights in a Long Island Community.
This program is made possible by funding from the Bowery Residents’ Committee and The New York Community Trust.
Unearthing New York City’s Forgotten Past: Seneca Village the Life and Death of an African American and Irish Immigrant Community
Mr. Herbert Seignoret
About the Talk:
Seneca Village was established in the 1820s as a free Black settlement. The Institute for the Exploration of Seneca Village History (IESVH) has defined its boundaries as 82nd to 89th Streets and 7th to 8th (Central Park West) Avenues, as these streets might extend into the park.
By the mid-1850s, it was a thriving community with a population of over 260; two-thirds were of African descent, while the rest were Europeans, mostly Irish. The community included a school and three churches; two were Black while one was racially integrated. In the 1850s, the City of New York legislated to construct Central Park in the area that included Seneca Village.
Taking the land through the right of eminent domain, it evicted the residents and razed their homes for the Park’s creation. This talk will explore the work done by the Institute for the Exploration of Seneca Village History to research and raise awareness on the silenced history of Seneca Village.
Herbert Seignoret is the Director of the Colin Powell School’s Academic Advising Office. He is also the Associate Director of the Institute for the Exploration of Seneca Village History. The goal of the institute is to conduct ongoing research on the site of Seneca Village, to educate the public about its significance to the city’s history, and to commemorate the site.
CLICK for Herbert Seignoret’s Select Bibliography and Additional Resources
The Story of Dyckman Oval: Uptown Manhattan’s Historic Negro League Baseball Stadium
Mr. Don Rice
About the Talk:
When the legendary Dyckman Oval ballpark opened at the northern tip of Manhattan in 1917, Major League baseball was still decades away from including players of color. Black independent teams at the time were filled with fantastic players, and NYC sports fans wanted to see these teams play. But for years local stadium owners had blocked many of them from booking games here.
As word spread that Dyckman Oval would book its events regardless of race, the ballpark became a go-to stop for some of the best black baseball outfits of the teens and twenties – among them Atlantic City’s Bacharach Giants and Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants. Just a few subway stops from Harlem, the games drew huge crowds. In 1935 the Oval hosted games 1 and 3 of the Negro National League World Series, and over its lifetime at least 30 future hall of famers played or managed there. We’re talking Rube Foster, Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, not to mention Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
But Dyckman Oval wasn’t just about baseball: the NFL at the time excluded black players too, and Fritz Pollard’s legendary unit, the Brown Bombers, held forth at the Oval for three seasons from 1935-1937. During its short 20 year existence, the Oval played a significant role supporting black sports in NYC at a time when players’ and teams’ options were limited. Using rare photos and recent research we’ll hear the ballpark’s story from its creation to its untimely end in 1938, a full plate a little-known NYC sporting life from the early 20th century.
An uptown resident for over two decades, Don Rice has served on the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum Alliance board since 2014 and as its President since 2017. In 2009 he began hosting a popular series of uptown history lectures with Cole Thompson and co-wrote “Lost Inwood” released in 2019 by Arcadia Publishing. Over the last 25 years he’s worked in the music departments of over 60 Broadway musicals.
Click here for Don Rice’s resource list to learn more about the Dyckman Oval.
Zora Neale Hurston and Pura Belpré: Pioneers of Black and Latinx Folk Culture in Upper Manhattan
Dr. Will Walker
About the Talk:
In January 1932, at the John Golden Theater on 58th St. between Broadway and 7th Ave., the famed writer Zora Neale Hurston mounted a daring and innovative revue called The Great Day, which featured Black folk culture in all its splendor.
A critical and popular success, the show included singing, dancing, sermonizing, and storytelling from various African diasporic traditions. Hurston had arrived in Manhattan seven years earlier in 1925 and had rapidly become a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Known for her short stories and novels, she was equally interested in using theater and oral storytelling to present Black lives and traditions.
In the same year as the debut of The Great Day, another significant folk cultural event occurred in New York City; a thirty-three-year-old New York City public librarian named Pura Belpré published a remarkable picture book titled Perez and Martina, the “first known Latino storybook published by a major English/American press . . . [and] the first known integrally bilingual (Spanish/English) children’s book in U.S. mainstream publishing history.” After migrating from Puerto Rico to New York in the early 1920s, Belpré had become the first Puerto Rican librarian in the New York Public Library system and, shortly thereafter, began telling stories originating in Latin America to audiences of children and families in library branches and other venues across the city, from the Lower East Side to Harlem. One of the programs she pioneered in these years continues today as a vital New York tradition: the Fiesta de los Reyes Magos, or Three Kings Day celebration. For Belpré, library work, storytelling, and writing served the larger purpose of cultivating effective approaches to bilingual education and fostering cultural pride among Latinx New Yorkers.
This talk details the work of these two remarkable women during the vibrant and tumultuous eras of the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Depression. It shows that Hurston and Belpré were pioneers in bringing Black and Latinx folk culture to New York and cultural ambassadors who profoundly challenged negative stereotypes and misconceptions about communities of color.
Will Walker is the author of A Living Exhibition: The Smithsonian and the Transformation of the Universal Museum and an editor of The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook (inclusivehistorian.com). He is an active public historian who oversees a long-term community oral history project and often facilitates community dialogue programs. You can find him on Twitter @willcooperstown.
The Enslaved at Sylvester Manor: Revealing their stories through Landscape and Memory
Ms. Donnamarie Barnes
About the Talk:
Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, the ancestral home of the Manhansett People, began in 1651 as a provisioning plantation worked by enslaved Africans brought from Barbados. For almost 400 years, the place has descended through the same family.
Today as a not for profit organization, Sylvester Manor Educational Farms’ mission is to Preserve, Cultivate and Share the stories of all the people who lived and worked on this land. Their presence is felt throughout the historic Manor house and throughout the 235 acre landscape.
Donnamarie Barnes began working at Sylvester Manor Educational Farm in 2016 as Curator/ Archivist after working for over thirty years in photojournalism as a photo editor. Her ongoing work of conserving the various collections at the Manor, researching and uncovering the lives and identities of the enslaved and indigenous people of Sylvester Manor is an integral part of the organization’s mission to Preserve, Cultivate and Share the stories of all the people of Sylvester Manor. She has curated the exhibitions, “Women of the Manor”, “A Place in Pictures” and “All That Has Been: Our Roots Revealed”. Her work at Sylvester Manor also includes ongoing photography projects relating to the memory of slavery felt in the landscape.
Black Dance and Music Connections with Jazz Power Initiative
Mr. Eli Yamin and Ms. Shireen Dickson
About the Talk:
How did the uptown spirit of community collaboration translate into worldwide recognition of black American artistic excellence? Join dancer Shireen Dickson and musician Eli Yamin for this experiential and participatory blend of facts, video footage, and signature songs and dances from the swing and bebop eras…
featuring exemplary stories from Harlem-based artists like Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Norma Miller and Dianne McIntyre.
Eli Yamin is a pianist, composer, singer, educator, co-founder and Managing Artistic Director of Jazz Power Initiative, an NYC based non-profit that transforms lives through jazz arts education and performance. He has released eight CD’s featuring his compositions, published three youth-centered jazz musicals in four languages and performed at The White House, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and over 20 countries as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. Department of State. Rooted in the belief that the blues heals, Eli wrote a book, So You Want to Sing the Blues, published by Rowman and Littlefield and the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS). Shireen Dickson is the director ofOKRA Dance Company, which presents interactive African and American diasporic dance and world rhythmic learning experiences in schools, libraries, museums and festivals throughout the US. She was the founding Community Engagement Director for both Elizabeth Streb’s SLAM and Dance Parade, Inc., and currently develops arts curricula, and facilitates teacher trainings and professional development programs infused with American social, cultural and activism practices for a range of organizations. Shireen is a founding executive board member of the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance based at Duke University, and a 2019 Women of Color in the Arts fellow. Shireen has been involved with Jazz Power Initiative since 2000.
Generations of Slavery on the Dyckman Property in Inwood, 1661-1827
Dr. Gretchen Sullivan Sorin and Mr. Richard Tomczak
About the Talk:
The generations of enslaved people that worked for the Dyckman family experienced ever-changing legal codes that restricted their movement, behaviors, and well-being. From the Dutch “half-freedom” of Jan Dyckman’s New Amsterdam, to the “negotiated manumission” of New York State, the family and their slaves were at the center of unfolding chapters of American history.
Their close proximity to New York City and the agricultural Hudson Valley estates would have made the Dyckman slaves cosmopolitan in the truest sense, with the ability to navigate the rural and urban landscapes of the region. In short, the lives of enslaved people of the Dyckman family shed light on the complex relationships forged in the environs of New York City and the transformation of slavery in the North.
Dr. Gretchen Sullivan Sorin is Director and Distinguished Service Professor at the Cooperstown Graduate Program. Dr. Sorin is the author of Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights recently released in February 2020. Dr. Sorin holds a B.A. degree from Rutgers University in American Studies, an M.A. in Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program and a Ph.D. from the University at Albany in American history. Dr. Sorin has more than thirty years of experience in the museum profession working for more than 250 museums as a museum exhibition curator and education, programming, and interpretive planning and strategic planning consultant.
Richard Tomczak is a PhD Candidate in History at Stony Brook University. His research examines the entangled relationships among law, labor, and empire in the colonial Americas.
This program is sponsored by TD Bank.
This program is made possible by funding from the New York Community Trust.
The Anti-Racism Starter Pack: 5 Things to Know about Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism
Dr. Sallie Han and Dr. Tracy Betsinger
About the Talk:
In this presentation, we will discuss what is known from the anthropological sciences about race and racism. Our hope is that when we are ourselves better informed, we can help educate and guide others as well as fight back and call out ignorance and misinformation.
We draw from our expertise and experience as professors of anthropology, people who actively question our assumptions and seek education, and parents raising children to be anti-racist.
Sallie Han is Professor of Anthropology at SUNY Oneonta, where she teaches courses in cultural, linguistic, and medical anthropology. She is a co-editor of The Routledge Handbook on the Anthropology of Reproduction (forthcoming in 2021). The daughter of Korean immigrants, Han was born in Queens, raised in New Jersey, and previously worked as a reporter at The Daily News. She lives with her husband and their two children in upstate New York.
Tracy Betsinger is Professor of Anthropology at SUNY Oneonta, where she teaches courses in biological and biocultural anthropology. She is co-editor of The Bioarchaeology of Urbanization: The Biological, Demographic, and Social Consequences of Living in Cities (forthcoming, Springer Press) and The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange: Bioarchaeological Explorations of Atypical Burials (2020, University of Florida Press). Before completing her PhD, she worked as a Forensic Drug Chemist for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and two sons.
Driving While Black: Race, Space, and the Automobile
Dr. Gretchen Sullivan Sorin
About the Talk:
It’s hardly a secret that mobility has always been limited, if not impossible, for African Americans. Before the Civil War, masters confined their slaves to their property, while free black people found themselves regularly stopped, questioned, and even kidnapped.
Restrictions on movement before Emancipation carried over, in different forms, into Reconstruction and beyond; for most of the 20th century, many white Americans felt blithely comfortable denying their black countrymen the right to travel freely on trains and buses. Yet it became more difficult to shackle someone who was cruising along a highway at 45 miles per hour.
In Driving While Black, the acclaimed historian Gretchen Sorin reveals how the car–the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility–has always held particular importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road.
Dr. Gretchen Sullivan Sorin is Director and Distinguished Service Professor at the Cooperstown Graduate Program. Dr. Sorin is the author of Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights recently released in February 2020. Dr. Sorin holds a B.A. degree from Rutgers University in American Studies, an M.A. in Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program and a Ph.D. from the University at Albany in American history. Dr. Sorin has more than thirty years of experience in the museum profession working for more than 250 museums as a museum exhibition curator and education, programming, and interpretive planning and strategic planning consultant.
Whiteness, Slavery, and the Making of Race in the Atlantic World
Dr. Matthew Reilly
About the Talk:
By the seventeenth century, England was establishing its empire throughout the Americas. In addition to implementing processes of land dispossession, Indigenous genocide, and large-scale agricultural production, this period also marked the rise of…
African chattel slavery and modern notions of race. Just as critical as the making of the racial “other”, however, was the creation of whiteness. This talk explores how whiteness emerged in the midst of debates surrounding forms of unfree labor on the Caribbean island of Barbados.
Using anthropological, archaeological, and historical perspectives, I explore how early modern racial distinctions were socio-legally constructed, how they come to bear on our understandings of localized histories of race in places like New York City, and how the complexities of race-making processes in the past are being manipulated in the present. For the latter, I focus on the re-emergence of the myth of “white slavery”, a narrative used to deny the historical realities of African chattel slavery and denounce contemporary movements for racial justice like Black Lives Matter.
Dr. Matthew Reilly is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Gender Studies, and International Studies at the City College of New York. He conducts archaeological research surrounding race and colonialism in the Caribbean and West Africa. He is the author of Archaeology below the Cliff: Race, Class, and Redlegs in Barbadian Society (2019), published with the University of Alabama Press.
Thinking Through Race Formations in Latin America and the U.S.
Dr. Maria Chaves Daza
About the Talk:
While race impacts all communities, race is not the same all over the world. This talk will provide and introduction to how race formations differ in Latin America, including Spanish speaking Caribbean, and the U.S.
Through a comparative analysis participants will be able to learn how the differences in racial formation impact Spanish speaking immigrants and their families within the U.S. and how they negotiate these differences as their race is read in the U.S. context.
Dr. Maria Chaves Daza was born in Bogotá, Colombia, grew up in Hialeah/Miami Lakes, Florida and moved to Chicago for college. Now Maria resides in upstate New York. Their experiences as an 1.5 generation queer immigrant, ni de aqui, nide allá, shape her academic and personal life. As an assistant professor in the Africana and Latinx Studies Department at SUNY Oneonta (the only comparative studies program in the SUNY system), Maria uses Comparative Ethnic Studies, Feminist, Women of Color theory, Critical Race Theory to teach interdisciplinary classes in media studies, cultural studies, literature and playwriting. Her site drmariachavesdaza.comshowcases her research and writing, sample course syllabi/assignments, and her student’s projects.
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Dyckman Farmhouse Museum is funded in part by a Humanities New York CARES Grant with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the federal CARES Act. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
