Location
Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series with Dr. Van Gosse
Join the Friends of the Weston Library and the League of Women Voters of Weston for two programs in honor of Black History Month with Dr. Van Gosse. Van Gosse, PhD, is Professor of History and Chair of Africana Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His latest book, The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America, From the Revolution to the Civil War will be published late February.
African Americans in New England
February 24, 1:30PM
Did you know that the United States' first black elected official took office in New Hampshire in 1776, and that the first black college graduates matriculated at Bowdoin, Middlebury, and Amherst? Although long-ignored or actively denied, slavery existed in all of the New England colonies. Emancipation, immediate or gradual, began during the Revolution, and the region's free people of color rapidly gained economic independence and political standing, especially in Massachusetts and the states to its north, more slowly in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
In this talk, Professor Gosse will draw on his new book, The First Reconstruction, to trace this evolution through the Civil War. Please register and we will send you the Zoom link in advance of the program.
First program in series:
The Great Migration and Jacob Lawrence
February 10, 1:30PM
Starting in 1916 and into the 1970s, six million African Americans left the rural South and moved to cities in the Northeast, Midwest and West. Join Dr. Van Gosse, who will discuss The Great Migration, what the “migrants” left behind, what they faced and how they fared in their new urban-industrial lives. His session will include the powerful visuals of artist Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series.
