Unnamed Figures: Black Presence in the Early American North
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- As early as 1825, a Connecticut preacher saw fit to make the statement that “slavery never existed here to any considerable extent, and for years it has been a thing unknown.” Neither of these assertions was true. However, the speaker’s confidence was supported by a popular understanding that has remained common into the twenty-first century. Despite powerful scholarship disproving the North’s wishful thinking about its past, the presence of early Black history in the region is still commonly forgotten. Drawing on doctoral research as well as the critically acclaimed 2023-2024 exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum, this talk will explore how, even in the context of such gaps in memory and the collective archive, historical images can further advance our understanding of Black experiences in the early American North. Join the American Folk Art Museum’s curator, Emelie Gevalt, for an in-depth discussion of a rare group of surviving portraits, overmantels, textiles, and other vernacular objects that illuminate the lives of Black Northerners in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Additional Details
Institution or Organization name - American Decorative Arts Forum
