Amy Godine – The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier

In her recent book, The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier, Amy Godine uncovers the story of Black pioneers who carved from the wilderness a future for their families and their civic rights.

In the mid 1800s, Gerrit Smith, a White abolitionist, granted Black settlers thousands of acres in the Adirondacks to encourage economic independence and combat the race-specific property ownership requirement in order to vote.

Though John Brown is perhaps the best known of these Black pioneers, much of their history is not remembered or disremembered. There are comparable Black Woods all over the world – including in Vermont – that can offer “insight on how to puzzle out entrenched narratives of regional identity.”

It is appropriate that Amy will be speaking on Earth Day! Gerrit Smith celebrated agrarianism along with abolition, describing his land giveaway as an exercise in environmental distributive justice. His Black agents were similarly captivated by land reform ideas and the promise of economic self-sufficiency on a self-made, self-owned farm.

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Independent scholar Amy Godine has been writing and speaking about ethnic, migratory, and Black Adirondack history for more than three decades. She has published fiction and nonfiction is numerous periodicals including The Antiquarian, North American Review, and Adirondack Life. Exhibits she has curated include Dreaming of Timbuctoo at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in North Elba, New York.

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Cohosted by The Yankee Bookshop, this event is free and open to all.