New Marlborough — The legacy of slavery, and how it continues to impact the world, will be discussed at an event at the New Marlborough Meeting House on Saturday, August 24, at 4:30 p.m. The event will include a discussion with Kerri Greenidge, a Mellon Associate Professor at Tufts University in Medford.
Greenidge is the author of “Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe,” released in 2019, and the historical biography “The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family,” released in 2022 to critical acclaim and several awards. The historical biography is about sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke from South Carolina who grew up on a plantation in the early 1800s.
Their father, Judge John Fauchereaud Grimke, owned multiple slaves who worked on the plantation. The two sisters, however, did not believe in slavery and were a part of the abolitionist movement and supporters of women’s rights. As Greenidge’s book chronicles, their older brother Henry, described as being violent and sadistic, had three sons with one of the slaves whom he owned.
The book chronicles the Grimke family, and according to its description from Liveright Publishing:
[Greenidge] indicts the white Grimke sisters for their racial paternalism. They could envision the end of slavery, but they could not imagine Black equality: when their Black nephews did not adhere to the image of the kneeling and eternally grateful slave, they were cruel and relentlessly judgmental—an emblem of the limits of progressive white racial politics.
Historian Eric Foner will join Greenidge at the event, as well as feminist and labor historian Alice Kessler-Harris as the moderator. “While the slavery era and the Reconstruction period are a long time ago now, the fact is that, if you just look at the front pages of newspapers right now as the presidential campaign continues, the issues of that period are still being debated in our politics,” Foner told The Berkshire Edge. “These issues include: Who is a citizen and should be a citizen of the United States? As you know, former President Donald Trump had some rather narrow views about this. Many years ago, he tried to claim that former President Barack Obama was not an American citizen.” Former President Trump made numerous false claims over the years, starting in 2011, that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
“In other words, this was about the definition of citizenship, which was central to the aftermath of slavery when it came to trying to determine what the status of the over 4 million slaves was going to be,” Foner said. “Who should have the right to vote? Aren’t there too many people voting? Should we accept the results of the democratic election? It’s all part of our current politics.”
“Slavery was, and is, arguably the greatest issue that Americans today have to deal with,” Kessler-Harris said. “It has left a legacy of both ideas and behaviors that are very difficult for people to shake and are still embedded in many ways both in the American Constitution and in American politics. It’s embedded in American social life, and in the way many Americans look at the world. I don’t think that there’s any argument that slavery’s legacy continues to have a huge impact on how we all think positively and negatively, ambivalently or ambiguously about what the world looks like today.”
As Kessler-Harris explained, “the effect of [the legacy of slavery] is very apparent in the current election” between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. “I think the effect of that is apparent in the current election, where one party keeps raising the issue of race and racial attachment and racial association, what it means and what it is,” Kessler-Harris said. “And the other party now sort of moves towards not denying it, but making the argument that we have to deal with racism and put it aside.”
New Marlborough Meeting House Board Vice President Judith Friedlander said that the board has aimed to organize events that tie into cultural and political matters of the Berkshire County community. “We are not trying to be controversial, we are trying to be timely,” Friedlander said. “These are all issues that the American people are all talking about. I think that, for people who will be voting in November, the race question is important. The questions about how we tell the story of racial conflict in this country have been contentious. For quite a while, legislatures in the south, particularly in Florida, have been challenging how slavery is taught in schools. At this event, we will have top-notch scholars who know how to speak to a wider public body in addressing these issues.”
Foner, Kessler-Harris, and Friedlander all had praise for Greenidge’s work. “I certainly believe that people should pay attention to history,” Foner said. “I think a little self-education is something people should do, especially with the presidential election on the horizon. Greenidge’s book about the Grimke family is a family drama that’s filled with interesting personal information, but it’s also a political saga about the struggle against slavery, the abolition of slavery, and what happened later on during the Jim Crow system. It’s a book that makes you think about the problems of interracial alliances, but also the promises of those alliances.”
“I don’t think people are consciously aware of how the legacy of slavery still impacts America,” Kessler-Harris said. “Greenidge emphasizes in her book that we must become aware of it. Her book does a good job of explaining why we should. Greenidge’s book shows that the Grimke sisters tried to come to terms with slavery, but they were not always successful at it.”
Greenidge was not available for an interview for this story.
As this story was going to press, on Tuesday, August 13, an X (formerly Twitter) account tied to Trump and his aides tweeted the following racist meme:
Import the third world
Become the third world pic.twitter.com/MVawiHQSpm
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 13, 2024
For more information about the event, including ticket purchases, visit the New Marlborough Meeting House’s website.
