The 8th national Slave Dwelling Project Conference will take place October 3-5 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in collaboration with University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
This year’s theme,The Illusion of Freedom: Slavery in the Northern States, seeks to explore American chattel slavery that was present in northern states prior to, and after the American Revolutionary War in the 1780s.
While gradual emancipation began after the Revolution, the complicity of northern states allowed the institution of enslavement to persist nationally. Current American ideology purports the North’s role in the American Revolution, the Underground Railroad, and the Civil War as asylum for the enslaved–nothing could be further from the truth. Less is known about northern participation in chattel slavery that existed in the United States and the legacy of chattel slavery that continues to disenfranchise the African American population and contribute to systemic racism.
The 8th conference of the Slave Dwelling Project, the first in a northern state, will examine those roles as the nation prepares for the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution in 2026.
