Black Girlhood Studies in Conversation with Dr. Nazera Sadiq Wright

In this conversation, Nazera Sadiq Wright will discuss her book Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century and recent digital humanities project, “DIGITAL GI(RL)S: Mapping Black Girlhood in the 19th Century.” Wright is associate professor of English and African American and Africana studies at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century (University of Illinois Press, 2016), which won the 2018 Children’s Literature Association’s Honor Book Award for Outstanding Book of Literary Criticism. Her digital humanities project, “DIGITAL GI(RL)S: Mapping Black Girlhood in the 19th Century” documents the cultural activities of black girls living in Philadelphia in the 19th century. In 2019, she was elected to the American Antiquarian Society. Fellowships through the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Bibliographical Society of America funded archival research for her second book, Early African American Women Writers and Their Libraries. Funded by the Center for Race, Ethnicity & Equity and co-sponsored with African and African American Studies; Institute for Public Health; American Culture Studies; and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Dissecting the Past: Doctors, Donors and Assembling a Collection

Slavery and Discrimination in Education, Voting Rights, and Economic Power

This year, 2022, marks the 100th anniversary of the Mound City Bar Association. In celebration of the anniversary, the Washington University Journal of Law & Policy recently published, “Celebrating the Mound City Bar Centennial; Looking back, Leading Forward,” which includes articles from prominent judges, lawyers, and professors on issues related to the Mound City Bar Association: https://journals.library.wustl.edu/lawpolicy/. This is the second of two programs featuring the authors. Cosponsored by the Washington University Public Interest Law & Policy Speaker Series, the Washington University Journal of Law & Policy, the Mound City Bar Association, and U.S. Arbitration & Mediation.

Speakers:

Professor David Konig, Washington University School of Law
Hon. David Mason, Judge, 22nd Circuit Court
Professor Kim Norwood, Washington University School of Law
Ronald Norwood, Lewis Rice, LLC
Denise Lieberman, Missouri Voter Protection Coalition
Sandra Moore, Advantage Capital
Dorothy White-Coleman, White Coleman & Associates, LLC
Hon. Lisa White Hardwick, Judge, Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District

2022 Universities Studying Slavery Spring Symposium

As members of the consortium all WashU students, staff, faculty and administrators are invited to attend the Universities Studying Slavery Spring Symposium, March 30 - April 2, 2022, in Greensboro and Winston-Salem, NC, hosted by Guilford College and Wake Forest University. March 31st,  will be held in Greensboro and April 1st, will be in Winston-Salem. The conference will feature tours of historic sites in the region, including the Old Salem’s Hidden Town Project, Salem College and Academy, Blandwood's Thomas Day Exhibit, the International Civil Rights Museum, and the Black is Beautiful exhibit at Reynolda House. They anticipate that this will be primarily an in-person meeting with some hybrid and virtual events, however, will be assessing the COVID situation and make changes accordingly.  Please refer to local Institution policies on COVID. Guilford College - Wake Forest Univesity

Anticipated themes include:

• In what ways are local communities partnering with public and historic sites?
• New methods for teaching hard histories
• Universities engaging communities around slavery
• The legacy of slavery and the politics of philanthropy

To register for the Symposium, click here. 

Rethinking Monuments & Memorials

Panelists will discuss examples including the museum's reinterpretation of the Jefferson statue, commemoration of Mill Creek Valley, interventions in Tower Grove Park, and work with EJI to address histories and legacies of lynching. Universities Studying Slavery will be among the initiatives featured at event resource tables, which will help to share and support the array of remembrance efforts underway in greater St. Louis. 

Programming, including resource tables, opens at 5:30. Panel event begins at 6:30.

March For Education and Equity Fair

Juneteenth Pop-Up Display

In commemoration of Juneteenth, we bring together works by four contemporary American artists of African descent—Torkwase Dyson, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Joyce Scott, and Danny Tisdale—for a pop-up display organized around the practices of storytelling and remembrance. While viewing the display, we invite you to reflect on what histories we are taught, whose stories matter, and how we remember. An accompanying reading table contains multiple points of entry for learning about the historical events surrounding emancipation as well as their legacies in the present, offering context for understanding the ongoing struggle for Black liberation and racial justice through the lenses of historical texts, personal narratives, and children’s literature.

Image credit

Torkwase Dyson (American, b. 1973), A Place Called Dark Black (Bird and Lava), 2020. Acrylic and ink on canvas, 96 x 80 x 2". University purchase, Parsons Fund and Bixby Fund, 2021.

Counter/Narratives of Independence: Celebrating Juneteenth

Join the University Libraries, in partnership with the Department of African and African-American Studies and the WashU & Slavery Project, for a special Juneteenth celebration. Come together as a community to learn more about the holiday and enjoy refreshments. The event will begin with an introduction to Juneteenth and its importance in history and today. Following the introduction, activities for all ages will be available, including a dramatic reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?,” children’s story time, interactive stations, and a viewing of current exhibitions.

Free and open to all, registration required.

20th Annual Mary Meachum Celebration

You're invited to be a part of history in the making at the 20th Annual Mary Meachum Celebration on Saturday, October 1, 2022 at Missouri's first nationally recognized Underground Railroad site - the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing on the Mississippi Greenway.

Each year, this event shines a spotlight on Black St. Louis history through theater performances, music, and activities for the whole family in a festive atmosphere with opportunities to shop, dine, and learn about community resources. The event takes place from 12 pm to 5 pm, but don't miss the main event: historical reenactments looking back over 20 years of celebrations from 3 pm to 4 pm.

The event is FREE and for people of all ages. For more information, visit www.MaryMeachum.org.

The event is significant to the WashU & Slavery project because several of the people who sought freedom by crossing the Mississippi River at this site in 1855 were enslaved by people who founded and shaped Washington University. Learn more about Esther, one of the freedom-seekers, who had been enslaved to WashU benefactor Henry Shaw.

Where is the Mary Meachum Site?

The site is located on the Mississippi Greenway. Several sections of the greenway are currently impacted by construction. To bike or walk to the site, you can park in North Riverfront Park and ride south on the greenway. To drive there, take Highway 70 to Grand Ave: East toward river; North on Hall to Prairie; Right on Prairie to site & parking.

Who was Mary Meachum?

Mary Meachum (1801–1869) and her husband, Reverend John Berry Meachum, were American abolitionists who dedicated their lives to educating and freeing enslaved people.  As part of Reverend Meachum’s church, he established a school for free and enslaved black students called the “The Candle Tallow School.” After the state of Missouri banned all education for black people in 1847, the Meachum’s moved their classes to a steamboat in the middle of the Mississippi River, which was beyond the reach of Missouri law. He provided the school with a library, desks and chairs, and called it the “Floating Freedom School.”  The Meachum’s home on Fourth Street in St. Louis was a safe house on the Underground Railroad. They also helped enslaved people escape to Illinois, where slavery was outlawed. Their work involved considerable risk due to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850- a law authorizing the hunting and capture of escaped enslaved people and requirement that they be returned to their enslavers.

Reverend John Berry Meachum grew up enslaved in Virginia and Kentucky before earning enough money to purchase his freedom. Before leaving Kentucky, he met Mary, an enslaved woman who was set to be moved by her enslavers to St. Louis. John followed Mary to St. Louis where he bought her freedom and eventually established the First African Baptist Church, the first black congregation in St. Louis. After John’s death in 1854, Mary Meachum continued their work educating and freeing enslaved people.

What is the significance of the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing Site?

On the night of May 21, 1855, in the area that is now part of the Mississippi Greenway: Riverfront Trail north of the Merchant’s bridge, Mary Meachum attempted to help a small group of enslaved people cross the Mississippi River to Illinois where slavery was outlawed. However, enslavers and law enforcement officials caught at least five of the enslaved people and arrested Mary for her participation in the plot. She was charged in criminal court for helping the “fugitives” escape. In 2001, the National Park Service recognized the site as part of the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

The Divided City spotlight - St. Louis International Film Festival

The Divided City spotlight film lineup focuses on the racial divide in St. Louis and other U.S. cities, and offers an international perspective by highlighting racial and ethnic divides in cities elsewhere. The series is supported by The Divided City: An Urban Humanities Initiative, which addresses one of the most persistent and vexing issues in urban studies: segregation. All screenings in the lineup are free except Night Life.

Missouri Historical Review Author Series: Kelly Schmidt on Slavery and the Catholic Church in Missouri

Schmidt combines extensive research in church archives and other repositories with contemporary mapping techniques to recover the identities of individuals largely obscured by traditional histories. In reconstructing the life experiences of those enslaved by Catholic individuals and institutions, she explores their long-term significance in shaping Catholicism within the emerging state of Missouri while tracing the religious and kinship networks by which they established a sense of community for themselves. Her talk will focus in part on the Nesbit family, tracing three generations through enslavement by Bishop Louis William Valentine DuBourg in 1822, agonizing separations as they were sent to various individuals and institutions within the Church, and finally their first successful freedom suit in the early 1840s.

The program is free, but registration is required. Please register here.

Pictured: Eliza Nesbit, who was enslaved to Bishop Louis William Valentine DuBourg and the Vincentians, then sold to the Religious of the Sacred Heart.