Slavery and Freedom (The Future of the African American Past, Session 02)

Описание: In “Slavery and Freedom,” panelists discuss historiographical trends in the study of slavery and post-emancipation society, illuminating how the dominant “freedom narrative” has been rethought and rewritten by various generations of scholars. Recent debates have centered on the tensions between emancipation as a turning point in American history and the limits of its aftermath. The session was held on Friday, May 20, 2016, at Warner Bros. Theater, National Museum of American History.

This session was part of The Future of the African American Past, a landmark conference concerning “what comes next” in the study of African American history. The conference took place on May 19-21, 2016, and was co-hosted by the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).

Sponsorship: The Future of the African American Past was made possible by generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (https://www.neh.gov/) and HISTORY (http://www.history.com/). For more information about the conference, including full session videos, please visit https://futureafampast.si.edu.

About the AHA: The American Historical Association is the largest professional organization serving historians in all fields and all professions. The AHA is a trusted advocate for history education, the professional work of historians, and the critical role of historical thinking in public life.
https://www.historians.org

About the NMAAHC: The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. It was established by Act of Congress in 2003, following decades of efforts to promote and highlight the contributions of African Americans. To date, the Museum has collected more than 36,000 artifacts and nearly 100,000 individuals have become charter members. The Museum opened to the public on September 24, 2016, as the 19th and newest museum of the Smithsonian Institution.
https://nmaahc.si.edu/

Video produced by Intelligent Television: http://www.intelligenttelevision.com/

Contents:

00:12 - Introduction by Lonnie Bunch (NMAAHC) and Jim Grossman (AHA).

04:32 – Chair Eric Foner (Columbia University) asks the panelists to consider whether the “slavery and freedom” paradigm of teaching the history of emancipation, central to John Hope Franklin’s landmark 1947 textbook From Slavery to Freedom, still stands as a useful model in the twentieth-first century.

14:33 - Walter Johnson (Harvard University) addresses the ethical concerns of suggesting that slavery “dehumanized” enslaved people.

31:55 – Eric Foner reads Brenda E. Stevenson’s (University Of California, Los Angeles) paper on how former slaves harnessed family rituals, such as marriage ceremonies, to reinforce their new legal status as free people.

42:43 - Thavolia Glymph (Duke University) disputes the notion that emancipation had a limited impact on freedom, citing examples of enslaved people that participated in the Union war effort who recognized that the road to full equality would be a much longer struggle.

58:55 - Annette Gordon-Reed (Harvard University) discusses recent controversies surrounding the removals of Confederate memorials from public spaces, and whether these acts constitute an erasure of the past.

Resources:
• The Federal Writers' Project Slave Narratives https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave...
• "Abraham Lincoln to Hon. Charles D. Robinson, August 17, 1864,” Collected Works of
Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7, p. 501
• “William T. Sherman to Thomas Ewing, Memphis, Aug. 10, 1862” in Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin, eds. Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860-1865 (Chapel Hill, 1999), 263-64.
• John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes (first published 1947)