Hosted by Atlantic Black Box, part of the Atlantic World Connections Speaker Series
Wednesday, February 19, 2025 at 6:00 pm ET
Online via Zoom
With Dr. Ousmane Power-Greene, Chair of Africana Studies and Professor of History at Clark University
Why did some African Americans leave for the small West African country of Liberia during the 1830s and 1840s? How did Liberia come to figure so prominently within the Black imagination in New England five decades after slavery had ended? In this talk, Dr. Ousmane Power-Greene, E. Franklin Frazier Chair of Africana Studies and Professor of History at Clark University, will explore the role Liberia played in the struggle for freedom and against slavery in New England and in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world.
Dr. Ousmane Power-Greene is the E. Franklin Frazier Chair of Africana Studies and Professor of History at Clark University in Worcester, MA. Professor Power-Greene’s books include Against Wind and Tide: African American Struggle Against the Colonization Movement (NYU, 2014) and a co-edited volume, In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World (University of Georgia Press, 2021).
Professor Power-Greene’s novel, The Confessions of Matthew Strong (Other Press/Random House, 2022), was a finalist for the New England Book Award and was recognized by NPR as a Best Book of 2022. He has been recognized with various fellowships, such as the National Endowment for the Humanities’ sponsored scholar-in-residency program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York. Dr. Power-Greene has also been featured on podcasts and radio programs, such as All Things Considered, CSPAN Book TV, and NPR’s history podcast Throughline.
On Monday, February 24 from 5:00 – 6:00 pm ET, Dr. Ousmane Power-Greene will return to share his research methods, sources, and tips with ABB members at our Research Forum. If you’re not yet an ABB member, join here!
