You are currently viewing The Black Woods

Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier

Join us for a special program in commemoration of Black History Month.

Date & Time: February 10, 2024 2:00pm
Location: This is a hybrid program. All lectures take place in-person at the County Gallery at SLCHA. To attend online, please contact carlene@slcha.org for the Zoom link.

Presented by Amy Godine. Download the flyer here.

$5 Suggested Donation. Books will be available for signing and purchase after the talk.

Longtime Adirondack Life contributor and author Amy Godine tells the story of an abolitionist land baron’s effort to colonize the Adirondack wilderness with 3,000 poor Black New Yorkers in 1846. With his land gifts, radical reformer Gerrit Smith hoped to ease Black access to the ballot when Black New Yorkers without property were disenfranchised. Godine relates stories from her new book, The Black Woods, about Black pioneers in Essex and Franklin Counties who integrated a swath of the Adirondack frontier, and shares findings on this story’s several links to St. Lawrence County.  

From Saratoga Springs, New York, independent scholar Amy Godine has been writing and speaking about ethnic, migratory, and Black Adirondack history for more than three decades. Exhibits she has curated include Dreaming of
Timbuctoo at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in North Elba, New York.

Inclement weather date: Tuesday, February 27th, at 5:00 p.m.