ABB Director of Research Kate McMahon presents a talk for Maine Historical Society’s Maine at 200 Series

Monday, September 14, 2020 | 6:00 – 7:00 pm
Register here

Sarah and Amos Peters came to Warren, Maine by the early 1780s and established a large community of African American, Native American, and mixed-race people whose lives were intrinsically linked to the sea and the land. Their story of hardships and triumphs can help us understand how early Mainers of color lived, worked, and formed communities that were sites of resistance to enslavement and racism. At the same time Maine was becoming a state in 1820, the Peters family and their kin fought to grow their families, their community, and their freedom despite the racism that they and others like them faced. Join MHS for this important and interesting talk with Dr. Kate McMahon of the Smithsonian Institution.

About the speaker: Kate McMahon was born and raised in Maine. She attended the University of Southern Maine for both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She completed her Ph.D. in History at Howard University in May 2017. Her dissertation, The Transnational Dimensions of Africans and African Americans in Northern New England, 1776–1865, explores the complexities of the shipbuilding economies of northern New England, their connections to the slave trade, and how Africans and African Americans resisted slavery, racism, and their afterlives.

This program is limited to 500 attendees. Register now!

Published by Meadow Dibble

Meadow Dibble is Director of Community-Engaged Research at the Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous, and Tribal Populations and founding Director of Atlantic Black Box, a nonprofit devoted to researching and reckoning with New England’s role in the slave trade and the economy of enslavement. She is currently in her third year as a Visiting Scholar at Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Meadow received her Doctorate from Brown’s Department of French with a focus on Postcolonial studies and taught Francophone African literature at Colby College from 2005–08. Originally from Cape Cod, she lived for six years on Senegal’s Cape Verde peninsula, where she published a cultural magazine and coordinated foreign study programs. In 2016, Meadow experienced a brutal awakening to the reality of her hometown’s deep investment in the global slave economy. Ever since, she has been researching complicity among Cape Cod’s sea captains while developing The Atlantic Black Box Project.

3 thoughts on “Event: Freedom’s Woods: The African American Community of Peterborough in Warren, Maine”

  2. Was not able to participate today…will it be repeated….or ….can it be viewed/accessed another time???

    Reply

Leave a Reply