2023 Lecture series

"In Perspective" expands the common narrative of life for Blacks in the Hudson Valley.

In association with the Columbia County Historical Society, the Archive presents a free lecture series throughout the spring of 2023.  These lectures aim to put into historical and sociological context the lived experiences of enslaved and freed people in the Hudson Valley. Noted scholars and researchers will be sharing their findings on how African Americans lived in the Hudson Valley from the 16th to 19th centuries.

"Slavery in the Hudson Valley and Columbia County"

Presented by Susan Stessin-Cohn
Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 3 p.m. 

To be in bondage, to be owned by another human being, to be subjected to another person’s total will—that was the essence of slavery. The natural “fight or flight” instinct in every human being dominated the minds of all those who were treated as property.
Humanizing an otherwise largely silent population, advertisements for fugitive slaves provide an exceptionally valuable window into Black life in Early America—from the nature of the slave system and the master-slave relationship to fascinating glimpses into material culture and folk life.

​This talk will be presented by award-winning historian and author Susan Stessin-CohnSusan Stessin-Cohn, whose book In Defiance: Runaways from Slavery in New York's Hudson Valley, 1735-1831 offers insight into the life and minds of these "runaways."

Reserve Your Spot for this Free Lecture

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​ "Lived Experiences of Enslaved Peoples in the Hudson Valley"

Presented by Dr. Andrea Mosterman
 Sunday, March 12, 2023 at 3 p.m.
Hudson Area Library, Hudson, NY

This free lecture will be presented both live and virtually.

In her presentation, Mosterman will explore the history of slavery and resistance in Dutch New York, with special attention to Kinderhook and surroundings. Through examination of Dutch American homes, Dutch Reformed churches, and public spaces in these predominantly Dutch American communities, she shows how Dutch American enslavers increasingly used their dominance over these spaces to control the people they enslaved, while enslaved people resisted such control by escaping or modifying these spaces and expanding their mobility and activities within them. Such close analysis of enslavement in these spaces reveals that by the mid-eighteenth-century slavery in New York was an advanced system of violence and control that had much in common with that of slave societies in the plantation South.

Andrea C. Mosterman is Associate Professor of Atlantic History and Joseph Tregle Professor in Early American History at the University of New Orleans. Mosterman's articles have appeared in, among others, The Journal of African History and Early American Studies.  She is the author of author of Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York.
www.andreacmosterman.com

Reserve your spot for dr. mosterman's lecture