The Black Experience in America can be characterized as a constant opportunity for learning. For the Black captives of the diaspora the American educational experience has been a stilted journey. The white frustration in resolving the Black presence in America has been equally experiential,experimental and educational.
From the ethnic reality perspective the opportunities to learn about America have been constant , omnipresent freely available and of times hazardous. The opportunities to "experience" America have been manifold. From a white reality perspective digesting the indigestible, integrating this unique and ancient transplanted force of nature has been problematic for the white body politic. Three/fifths, slavery, gradual emancipation, repatriation, segregation, separate but equal,jim and jane crow , jim and jane crow jr , jim and jane crow 111, civil rights, black power, black liberation theology and attempts to transform and move beyone race remind us of this constant America educational experiment to construct a civilized society.
Assistant Professor Hilary Moss's presentation at the New Haven Colony Historical Society on Wednesday May 7th, resurrected the ghosts of America's glorious, bloodied and triumphant past. America's future we will leave to the future but she reminded the audience that the American legacy resonates today. We can hear it, if we listen, we can feel it if we want to , we can see it if we so desire.
Listening to her cogent yet informal presentation particularly regarding the haunting ghostly presence of for example , Nat Turner's liberation creativity, David Walker's Appeal, William Lloyd Garrison, The Cherokee Trail of Tears, the Black Convention of 1831 in Philadelphia, Jacksonian Democracy, White Identity and Prudence Crandall escorted those in attendance "back in time."
We were transported "back in time" where issues of race, class, politics, elites, miscegenation, fear,immigration and urban growth where swirling about, intersecting,colliding and competing, Nothing like today's climate.
A People Generally Enlightened Cannot Be Enslaved:
Black Activism & Higher Education in Antebellum New Haven
BY HILARY J. MOSS, AMHERST COLLEGE
When: Wednesday May 7th
The Origins of Racial Inequality in American Education
In 1831, black aspirations to establish the first college in the nation for men of their race were shattered when white residents of New Haven, Connecticut, rejected their proposal by a vote of 700 to 4. Amherst College Professor Hilary Moss’s lecture, “Wandering through a ‘Pro-slavery Desert’: New Haven, Connecticut and the Emergence of White Oppression in Black Education,” explored the dialogue surrounding the failed New Haven college as part of a larger effort to understand white oppression to black education in the antebellum North. Despite its liberal reputation, Connecticut displayed the greatest hostility of all New England states to both black education and the burgeoning abolitionist movement, a “desert of pro-slavery indifference and hostility,” in the eyes of one observer.
About the Author:
Hilary Moss is assistant professor of history and black studies at Amherst College. She received her B.A. degree from Northwestern University and her M.A. from Brandeis University in 2004. Her work explores the origins of racial inequality in American education. The event was co-sponsored by the history department and educational studies program at Trinity College and the Connecticut Historical Society.
Drawing on social, cultural, intellectual, and political history, Moss teaches the African American experience from the slave trade to the present. She offers introductory courses in Black Studies and African American history, as well as upper level seminars in slavery and education. Students in her seminar “Slavery and the American Imagination” explore historical and literary depictions of the “peculiar institution” to uncover connections between America's racial past and its racial present . She also offers a seminar that looks at the relationship between race and educational opportunity from slavery to No Child Left Behind. This course emphasizes how race has influenced access to education, and how America has attempted to dismantle the educational inequalities created under slavery and Jim Crow. While her research concentrates on the early nineteenth century, She enjoys teaching about an array of contemporary educational issues including magnet schools, choice, residential segregation, and standardization.
Video Excerpts from her educational presentation are below:
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