Myth, Reality & Mapping the Underground Railroad
An Interactive Workshop & Panel Discussion
May 5, 2018, 9am-3:30pm
St John’s Church, 101 Chapel Street, Portsmouth NH
Few historic institutions from the black past have attracted contemporary attention more than the Underground Railroad. Tales of white abolitionists who steered escaped enslaved men, women and children through the secretive world of special codes, false walls and hide-outs in attics, barns and cellars, have sometimes distorted historical facts.
Separating these facts from fiction has lead scholars and independent researchers to explore different avenues such as oral history, African American cultural landscapes, archaeology, geography, and material culture to uncover a truer story.
This symposium will take a critical look at the true nature of the movement as it wove its way through old established New England towns. Additionally, the program will offer a hands-on workshop that will give the newly interested and the veteran researcher ideas on how to research their towns involvement in the UGRR and new paths to explore. Through sharing their own local story of a place or a particular person and by using a place-based approach centered on maps and mapping participants can piecing together history of a place, a region and ultimately their state.
Bring your questions and your problems, solutions and discoveries along with copies of historic maps if you have them, addresses, photographs, narrative accounts or just bring your interest, we will supply the rest.
Program Outline
9:00am Guided Tour
Stories of the Underground Railroad in Portsmouth, NH
Tour Guide & Sankofa Scholar Angela Matthews
10:30 AM Panel/ Discussion
Bridging the Past to the Present: Stories of the Underground Railroad in Our Region
Maria Madison, President of the BOD Robins House Museum, Concord MA
Lynn Clark, Former Director of the Indian Museum, Warner NH
L’Merchie Frazier, Director of Education and Interpretation, Museum of African American History, Boston MA
Jane Williamson, Director Emerita for Rokeby Museum, Ferrisburgh VT
12:30 PM Lunch
1:00 PM Living History Presentation
Before Rosa Parks, there was Ellen Garrison Jackson
Maria Madison as Ellen Garrison Jackson
1:30 PM Interactive Workshop
Mapping the Underground Railroad in Your Town
Dr. Cheryl LaRoche, Department of American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park.
Panel Biographies
Dr. Cheryl LaRoche teaches in the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She lectures on a wide range of historical topics; her work has taken her across the country, from New England to the banks of the Mississippi River and beyond. She has consulted for the Smithsonian, the National Park Service, the National Forest Service, the African Meeting House in Boston and Nantucket, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, and a number of other historical sites and projects. She has worked for cultural resource firms such as URS Corporation and John Milner Associates. She was the cultural heritage specialist for the President’s House archaeological site for URS and the National Park Service in Philadelphia. Most recently she served as a project historian for the Smithsonian’s newest museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Dr. LaRoche was one of the authors of the National Significance of the Harriet Tubman Historic Area for the National Park Service and she was the lead author for “Resistance to Slavery in Maryland: Strategies for Freedom” for the Organization of American Historians and the National Park Service. She worked as an archaeological conservator for the African Burial Ground Project in New York City where she was responsible for conserving the grave goods from the burials.
Dr. Maria Madison, President for the BOD for Robins House and Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Madison has over 20 years of experience in evidence-based research and management, especially in the design and implementation of clinical trials both in the U.S. and globally.
Madison is an educator, and currently holds an adjunct faculty position at the University for Global Health Equity in Kigali, Rwanda. She is also the founder and president of the Robbins House, Inc., a historic home and nonprofit organization focused on raising awareness of African-American history in Concord, Mass.
Dr. Lynn Clark is an independent museum professional with a background in anthropology and archaeology. She has worked at several museums in New Hampshire, most recently as Executive Director of the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum in Warner. Her research interests include African Americans and African Native Americans in rural New Hampshire. She co-authored a paper about these individuals, with fellow researcher Rebecca Courser, which was published in an issue of Historical New Hampshire devoted to Black history. She is currently writing a history walk for Warner which will include Warner’s African American soldiers. Through her work she aims to make historical narratives inclusive of all New Hampshire’s peoples.
L’Merchie Frazier, fiber artist and holographer and poet. She is Director of Education and Interpretation for the Museum of African American History, Boston/Nantucket for fifteen years, highlighting the Museum’s collection/exhibits, providing place-based education and interdisciplinary history programs, projects and lectures, most recently promoting STEM / STEAM education pedagogy. She is adjunct faculty for Pine Manor College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts and an African American history advisor to Bunker Hill Community College Faculty, Charlestown, Massachusetts. She has served the artistic community for over twenty years as an award winning national and international visual and performance artist and poet, with residencies in Brazil, Taiwan, France, Costa Rica and Cuba.
Jane Williamson regularly speaks about her Underground Railroad research for the Vermont Humanities Council, and serves as Director Emerita for Rokeby Museum where she assists with academic education programs and special projects. During Jane’s 20-plus tenure as Rokeby Museum Director, she conducted extensive research about Black and Abolitionist history and worked to provide a more nuanced interpretation of the Underground Railroad in Vermont through Rokeby’s educational programs. She led the development of the NEH-funded and award-winning exhibit, Free & Safe: The Underground Railroad in Vermont, which is housed in the Museum’s recently built Education Center. Because of Jane’s tireless scholarship, Rokeby is known today as one of the best-documented Underground Railroad sites in the county, one the National Park Service has described as “unrivaled among known sites for its historical integrity and the poignancy of the stories it tells.”
COST
$35 TOUR & SYMPOSIUM (includes lunch)
$25 SYMPOSIUM ONLY (includes lunch)
$20 TOUR ONLY
