Additional resources for workshop on slavery in New England, 3/10/07
Slavery in the North website, including a page of information specific to each northern state: http://www.slavenorth.com/
Hartford Courant Complicity website:
http://www.courant.com/news/local/northeast/hc-slavery,0,3581810.special
and
http://www.courant.com/news/local/northeast/hc-complicity2-sp,0,7473864.special
Yale-New Haven Teacher Institute lesson plan on slavery in CT:
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1980/6/80.06.09.x.html
Slavery curriculum developed by Alan Singer, Hofstra University:
http://people.hofstra.edu/faculty/Alan_J_Singer/slaverycurriculum.html
Levi Hart 1774 plan for abolition in Connecticut: [log into CCSU library to access]
http://www.jstor.org/view/00284866/ap050296/05a00080/0
Logs of slave trading ships between New London and Africa, 1757-58
http://www.cslib.org/slaverlog.htm
Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves
Robert Cottrol, ed., From African to Yankee: Narratives of Slavery and Freedom in Antebellum New England
Joanne Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780-1860
John Wood Sweet, Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730-1830
James Oliver Horton and Lois Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860
Lorenzo Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England
Edgar McManus, Black Bondage in the North
Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860
Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700-1807
James Oliver Horton and Lois Horton, Slavery and the Making of America
OAH Magazine of History issue on colonial slavery:
http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/colonialslavery/
Jill Lepore, New York Burning: Liberty and Slavery in an Eighteenth-Century City [Pulitzer Prize finalist]
Denis Caron, A Century in Captivity: The Life and Trials of Prince Mortimer, a Connecticut Slave [Mortimer, born in Guinea, enslaved as a child around 1730, held for more than 80 years as a slave in Middletown before being imprisoned in the notorious New-Gate Prison for attempting to poison his master]
Shane White, “’It Was a Proud Day’: African Americans, Festivals, and Parades in the North, 1741-1834,” Journal of American History 81 (June 1994): 13-50
Autobiographies/slave narratives
Arna Bontemps, ed., Five Black Lives (Wesleyan University Press, 1971)
Autobiographies of five Connecticut men: Venture Smith, James Mars, William Grimes, Rev. G.W. Offley, James L. Smith
James Pennington, Fugitive Blacksmith (http://www.nps.gov/archive/cato/educ/les4.htm)
Story of his escape from slavery in Maryland; he later became minister and leader in Hartford’s black community
The North American Slave Narratives collection contains a number of narratives concerning Connecticut slaves or runaway slaves who had fled to Connecticut. See, in particular, Autobiography of James L. Smith, Including, Also, Reminiscences of Slave Life, Recollections of the War, Education of Freedmen, Causes of the Exodus, etc.; Life of James Mars, A Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut; Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave. Written by Himself.; Sketches of the Life of Joseph Mountain, a Negro, Who Was Executed at New-Haven, on the 20th Day of October, 1790; and A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America. Related by Himself
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/
Robert Desrochers, Jr., “’Not Fade Away’: The Narrative of Venture Smith, An African American in the Early Republic,” Journal of American History 84 (June 1997): 40-66
David White, “The Real Life of James Mars,” Connecticut History 43, no. 1 (2004): 28-46
Fiction:
James Collier and Christopher Collier, Jump Ship to Freedom
(Written for a middle-school audience, the book follows 14-year old Daniel, an enslaved boy from Connecticut, as he tries to escape a cruel master and jump ship in New York)
[CCSU Library Curric Lab J: C699ju]
James Collier and Christopher Collier, War Comes to Willie Freeman
A young black girl disguises herself as a boy during the Revolution and begins a search for her mother.
[CCSU Library Curric Lab J: C699.wa]
See other fiction suggestions at PBS “Slavery and Making of America” site (below)
Museum resources:
Slavery and Freedom in the North, based on the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich’s exhibit Intimate Strangers: Slavery and Freedom in Fairfield County, 1700-1850, includes sample documents, timelines and other resources, and teacher resources, with lesson plans at different grade levels. http://www.hstg.org/index.cgi/1633
Mattatuck Museum’s exhibit, Fortune’s Story, about a slave to a Waterbury doctor in the late 18th century, whose skeleton is part of the museum’s collection. A special website, http://www.FortuneStory.org offers an online version of the exhibit, including information about slavery in Waterbury, reconstructing the skeleton, a eulogy poem written by the state’s Poet Laureate, and web-based curriculum materials. There is also biographical information on slaves and slave owners in Waterbury that could be used in different ways.
Webb Deane Stevens Museum in Wethersfield offers tours focusing on lives of slaves living in the historic house in the 18th century. See http://www.webb-deane-stevens.org/
Noah Webster House in West Hartford’s exhibit, Bristow: Putting the Pieces of an African-American Life Together, through August 2007. See http://noahwebsterhouse.org/bristow.html
The Freedom Business: Connecticut Landscapes Through the Eyes of Venture Smith, an exhibition at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT. The exhibit has been extended through June 24, 2007.
For more information, www.flogris.org
Other online resources:
Africans in America PBS website:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html
Slavery and the Making of America PBS website, including good bibliographies and other resources:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/
“Breaking the Silence: Learning about the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” including a special section on “Teaching the Middle Passage” including lesson plans, activities, and sources:
http://www.antislavery.org/breakingthesilence/main/04/index/shtml
Voyage of the Slave Ship Sally: Digitized documents pertaining to the voyage of the slave ship Sally in 1764-65, from its initial preparation through the long months on the African coast, a failed insurrection and disease, to the auctioning of surviving captives on the West Indian island of Antigua. This was one of the best-documented slave voyages from Rhode Island (and one of the deadliest).
www.stg.brown.edu/projects/sally
The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record
http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/index.php
The Unrighteous Traffick: Rhode Island’s Slave History
http://www.projo.com/extra/2006/slavery/
Traces of the Trade documentary film in progress, on discovering family connections to the Rhode Island slavery trade:
http://www.tracesofthetrade.org/about.html
Exploring Amistad at Mystic Seaport: includes over 500 primary documents including court documents, journal entries, and newspaper stories, as well as curriculum ideas and bibliography.
http://amistad.mysticseaport.org/
Hartford Black History Project:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/HBHP/exhibit/menu.html
“Slavery in New York” exhibit at the New York Historical Society
www.slaveryinnewyork.org
Yale, Slavery, and Abolition [on Yale University’s ties to slavery and abolition]:
http://www.yaleslavery.org/
Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice:
http://www.brown.edu/Research/Slavery_Justice/
WGBH Forum Network - African American Series: includes a wealth of lectures, in audio and video formats, on slavery and abolition in New England. Look under “Slavery Past and Present” for lectures on slavery and the law in New England, New England and the Slave Trade, reparations, race and slavery at the Liberty Bell, and more.
http://www.forum-network.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=0100
NPR “Talk of the Nation”: 2003 story about teaching slavery
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=995144
A Visual Remembrance: African Slave Markers in Colonial Newport: The site contains photographs and information about Newport, Rhode Island's African burial ground, as well as material about the lives of enslaved and free blacks in colonial Rhode Island.
http://www.colonialcemetery.com/
National Geographic Underground Railroad simulation site:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/99/railroad/index.html
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center:
http://www.freedomcenter.org/
“Follow This Trail to Freedom in the 1850s” an online simulation game from Gilder Lehrman Institute:
http://www.historynow.org/09_2005/interactive.html
Beneath the Underground Railroad: The Flight to Freedom
The story of slave flight south of the Underground Railroad, from the Maryland State Archives.
http://www.mdslavery.net/index.html
The “Not for Sale” campaign against current-day slavery and human trafficking:
http://notforsalecampaign.org