New York and the Death of the Atlantic Slave Trade
Reviewed by Samantha Payne
John Harris’s The Last Slave Ships: New York City and the End of the Middle Passage reveals how and why the long survival of the slave trade in the United States was related to the politics of slavery across the Atlantic World. During the first half of the 19th century, more than seventy-five percent of enslaved Africans transported to the New World arrived in Brazil. In 1850, Brazil abolished the slave trade — an act which, Harris argues, transformed the inner workings of the illegal traffic in the United States.
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The World That Fear Made: Interview with Jason T. Sharples
Interviewed by Madeline Lafuse
Today on the blog, Madeline Lafuse speaks with Jason T. Sharples, author of the recently published The World That Fear Made : Slave Revolts and Conspiracy Scares in Early America, about how the fear of slave conspiracies shaped New York City and early America.
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Monuments of Colonial New York: Stuyvesant and Hudson
Douglas Hunter and Nicole Maskiell
Today’s installments in Gotham’s ongoing series on monuments in / about colonial NYC, takes us back to Nieuw Amsterdam. Douglas Hunter and Nicole Maskiell ask us to reconsider the memorials of two dominant figures of the Dutch period: Henry Hudson and Petrus Stuyvesant. Uniting their pieces is a call to think more about the men — and in Maskiell’s case, the women, too — who toiled under these leaders.
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A Long and Complex Legacy:
An Interview with Thai Jones on the Columbia University and Slavery Project
Interviewed by Robb K. Haberman
Today on the blog, editor Robb Haberman speaks with Thai Jones, who co-taught the Columbia University and Slavery Seminar in 2020, about the history of slavery and its continuing legacy at King’s College and Columbia University.
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DyckmanDISCOVERED: Fostering Inclusive Historical Narratives
By Meredith Sorin Horsford
In 2015, the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum (DFM), which had been a very traditional historic site with little relationship to its community, came under new leadership. Soon after, DFM became the recipient of a grant program called shatterCABINET with the Chipstone Foundation, which provides funding to rethink how historic house museums can be relevant to their present-day community. Through this grant, the Dyckman Farmhouse removed all of the room barriers that had previously prevented visitors from entering the period rooms, installed bilingual labels and signage, and began offering bilingual programs, promotional materials, and visitor services. This not only impacted the audience that we serve, as neighborhood residents began visiting the museum for the first time, but it also helped the organization reshape public programs to feature interpretation that connects the history of the site and its rural roots to the present-day urban community.
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