Hosted by Atlantic Black Box
Wednesday, May 1, 2024 at 6:00 pm
ONLINE
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On Wednesday, May 1 our Atlantic World Connections online speaker series continues with a presentation by Dr. Kerima Lewis on arson as a tool of resistance among the enslaved population of colonial New England.
In colonial New England, enslaved men and women of African heritage worked out their lifetime servitude as domestic servants, maritime workers, skilled laborers, and farmhands. Faced with this unending forced labor, which was accompanied by brutal beatings and heavy legal restrictions, some struck back with force. Among the repertoire of resistance methods enslaved men and women devised to counter this unending oppression, acts of arson figured prominently from the early colonial period through the outbreak of the American Revolution.
Kerima M. Lewis teaches U.S. and African American history at Massasoit Community College and Emerson College in Massachusetts. Having worked in the fields of Social Work and Law before becoming a historian, she holds a B.A. degree from Northwestern University, a M.S.W. degree from the Hunter College School of Social Work, a Juris Doctor degree from New York University School of Law, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley.
