Encountering Slavery in Newton

Historic Newton is sponsoring two talks this month on the theme of “Encountering Slavery and Race in New England,” both free to the public.

On Thursday, 7 October, at 7:00 P.M., Tom Lincoln will speak on “The Royall House and Slave Quarters of Medford.”

Lincoln, Executive Director of the Royall House, will present an illustrated talk on this National Historic Landmark and highlight the oft-neglected history of colonial slavery in Massachusetts through archaeological artifacts, architecture and narrative.

Many rural New England mansions of the 1700s had rooms or outbuildings for enslaved workers, but the Royall House is the only one where such a structure has been preserved and interpreted for the public.

On Thursday, 21 October, at 7:00 P.M., Joanne Pope Melish, Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, will speak on “The Worm in the Apple: Slavery, Emancipation, and Race in New England.”

She will address the amnesia New Englanders experience about slavery in their own region and its consequences for the development of racial ideologies.

Melish’s 1998 book Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780–1860 helped to start the current movement to reexamine slavery in the American northeast.

Both talks will take place at Myrtle Baptist Church, 21 Curve Street in West Newton.