In honor of Black History Month, the National Park Service will welcome Dr. James Gigantino, an Assistant Professor of History and an allied faculty member in African and African American Studies at the University of Arkansas, to discuss his new book The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865. The program, entitled “Rethinking Slavery’s Slow Death in New Jersey,” will take place on Saturday, February 28, 2015 at 1:00 p.m. at the park’s Washington’s Headquarters Museum, 30 Washington Place, in Morristown, New Jersey. Admission is absolutely free with book sales and a signing to follow the discussion.
Slavery, opposed to popular understanding, continued in the North into the nineteenth century. This was especially the case in the Garden State, the last northern state to pass an abolition act, in 1804. The law, which freed children born to enslaved mothers only after they had served their mother’s master for more than two decades, allowed slavery to continue in New Jersey through the Civil War.
To read more about the event, click here.
To read a Q&A with Gigantino, click here.
From: H-Net