The Peru Gazette

North Star Underground Railroad Museum , 1131 Mace Chasm Rd. , Ausable Chasm, NY 12911-1704

A quarter century after the Founding Fathers declared, “all men are created equal,” New York actually passed a law (in 1799) to end slavery. But the promise of freedom was still delayed….almost 30 years, for the luckiest enslaved individuals. Many younger people had to wait longer. 

As this Fourth of July week begins, Dr. Sherrill Wilson takes a journey back in time to the African communities of Dutch and English New York, and their celebrations of freedom. Africans were enslaved in New York for more than 200 years, from 1623. How did those communities celebrate freedom, even as some of their children were still enslaved? Dr. Wilson focuses on the churches, parades and other festivities that marked the celebrations of freedom from 1827 to the end of the Civil War.

Dr. Sherrill D Wilson earned a Ph.D. in Urban Anthropology from the New School for Social Research. She is the author of New York City’s African Slave Owners. She lectures and writes on the subject of the African presence in northern colonial era cities. She has lectured at the Smithsonian Institute, Columbia University, the American Museum of Natural History, NY National Monument African Burial Ground and numerous other organizations and institutions, nationwide and internationally.

This program is sponsored in part by a grant from the New York State Council for Humanities and is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the presentation.