Leading Scholar of African Americans in the Civil War Era To Draw on Rare Oral Histories in Talk at Smith

Preeminent historian of slavery Ira Berlin, professor of history at the University of Maryland and founding director of the university's Freedmen and Southern Society Project, will discuss "American Slavery in History and Memory" at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 3, in Smith College's Wright Hall Auditorium.

The lecture is free, open to the public, and wheelchair-accessible.

Berlin is the author or editor of 14 books on African-American slaves, free blacks, and emancipation during the Civil War. "Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America" (1998), praised as "a masterly work" by the New York Times Book Review, addresses slavery in the greater Atlantic economy, in countries ranging from Brazil to the Caribbean to the United States. "Remembering Slavery" (1998) is a collection of rare recorded interviews from the 1930s in which African Americans discuss their personal experiences of slavery and emancipation.

Berlin will draw on both of these works in his talk at Smith, which is expected to address the many different forms and meanings slavery has had in different regions and time periods. In particular, he will discuss the distinct regional histories of slavery in the North, Mid-Atlantic, Chesapeake, Carolinas, and Mississippi Valley.

Berlin is currently a visiting professor in graduate studies at Yale University.