during the colonial era. the abigail adams historical society cohost of this event. anne >> welcome. welcome to the ham heritage museum. i have the privilege of serving as executive director whose home here is that the hearing i'm heritage museum. what a treat to welcome you all here tonight in this sold out program. i would like to thank, on behalf of our board of directors and small staff, i would like to thank you all for making us part of your week. i would also like to thank jared hardest ski for travis -- traveling across the country to see us. for filming us, thank you to c-span. for those who can't see it can see it at a later date. thank you to abigail adams and their board of directors who offered us this wonderful opportunity and to partner with them as we did last year with their speaker edith. abigail's rich history in this region inspires us every day. thank you. the hingham historical society helps us understand all voices. we are currently in the midst of a campaign for the lincoln house, which is our effort to purchase the home of hingham's american revolutionary war hero. benjamin lincoln received the british sort of surrender at your town, or as we like to tell our visiting schoolchildren, that is benjamin lincoln on the whitehorse. (laughter) featured so prominently in the rotunda of the u.s. capital. benjamin lincoln also served hingham as a clerk, constable -- he also came from a family that owned slaves. two blocks from here, there is a slave quarter in the attic of the benjamin lincoln home. our next major exhibit here at the museum, generates out of the archeological finds from the ndas green bush excavation. the artifacts -- they tell many stories. but the amazing story of the tribe for which the commonwealth gets its name, the mattresses -- a mattress to sit. we are privileged to work with the mattress -- actress -- we present the voices correctly. how do we tell the story of slavery? how do we tell the story of our native people well? and correctly? we do it together. it is a joy to be here tonight with all of you. all voices at the table, and thank you for coming to tonight's program. i would like to introduce michelle, head of the board at the abigail's adams historical society. thank you for coming tonight. (applause) welcome and thank you so much for coming this evening. i want to thank la deirdre and michael sincerely and the rest of the historical society for partnering with us on our program. we are so happy to do this. before i get into the introduction, i want to tell you about another program that you might find of interest. on saturday, march 28 from nine to one at the spire center, the backroads of the south shore, which is a consortium of local historical organizations of which the hingham historical society and the abigail adams historical society -- we have so many exciting anniversaries in massachusetts, that the symposium this year we'll be focusing on those anniversaries, such as, obviously the 400th arrival of the mayflower, 100th anniversary of the reaching of women's suffrage. interesting lee, locally, the 100th anniversary of the subject of the kenow. more information is available on our website. i am a member of the board of the abigail adams historical society. we oversee and are the stewards of the abigail adams birthplace, which is built in 16 85. it is where abigail smith adams was born in 1744. she lived her first 20 years of her life there until she married john adams and 1764. she continued to be connected to this house throughout her life. she visited her parents. this is a place where her character and ideals were formed. it is very important to her. we are an all volunteer organization, and we try and continue her spirit by offering educational programs. for seasonal tours, private tours. if you would like more information, please check out our website at abigail adams birthplace torque. when i first joined the abigail 's adam historical society a few years ago, despite knowing how prevalent slavery was in early new england, i'm still shocked to discover that there were slaves in the home where abigail adams grew up. her anti slavery sentiments are well-known. but her father, reverend william smith had at least for slaves. quito, tower, tom and phoebe. these individuals were important to abigail adams early life. in trying to commemorate and honor their memory by researching their lives and cooperating information about their lives into our tours and also offering a program on early new england slavery every year. this year, we are very pleased to be able to have jarrett hardesty join us. i wanted jarrett to speak for us since his first book came out which is on he is the author of black lives, native lands, white world's. let's give him a warm welcome. (applause) >> good evening everyone. thank you for coming. thank you to the hingham historical society. this place is really nice. also, to the board of the abigail adams historical society slash birthplace. it is a great honor to be here, and thank you to the audience as well. this is now the second bush talk i've given about this particular book. almost everyone has been sold out. it's heartening as an author, but also to someone who cares about the subject. once this information is out there as an educator. it is my great honor to be here this evening to talk about black lives, native lands, white worlds. the history of slavery in new england. this book is the first general overview of slavery in new england and nearly -- in nearly 80 years. the last book to do this was the knee grow -- published in 1942. there have been plenty of books that explore slavery in new england -- slavery in the american north very focused historical study, and i am certainly guilty of doing that in my first book. this is a general overview meant for reading public. this evening, i want to discuss the purpose of writing this book or in other words, why i think we need this book in this moment. to give you a brief overview of its concepts, in doing so, i will talk about slavery in new england generally. why write this book at all? and specially in this moment? it came out in 2019. in the end, i envisioned this book as a conversation. or rather be narrating a conversation that has been going on for about the past 25 years. you see about four different conversations going on in that time period. the first, there has been a massive outpouring of academic scholarship, books, journals, articles, things like that, by scholars on the topic of new england slavery. much of that scholarship has been hyper specialized, and i'm totally guilty. focusing on particular places, moments, themes or sense of sources. these works, as excellent as they are, sometimes make it difficult to see the bigger picture. also, there are sometimes inaccessible because of the way academics -- but because of things like pay walls that are very expensive to get access to. a second conversation. it is the libraries, archives, historical societies across new england who have identified that they owned collections related to slavery. he made them weiss widely accessible via online publishing, traditional print publishing, but also something as simple as wendy's libraries digitized there catalogues, providing subject headings relating to slavery. it makes the sources much easier to identify and more accessible. the third, added to that a historical reckoning with slavery by leading institutions across new england, such as brown universities reports on slavery and injustice. now that reckoning, which started back in 2003 with brown has extended to historic sites large and small. either universities, and local and state governments. they've all begun to dig into their own past relationships with slavery. finally, the final piece of this is the work of community activists, public historians, local historians and the researchers who have uncovered an incredible amount of source material on slavery and publicized it in the most radically accessible ways. this forces us all to acknowledge the region's history and connection to slavery. we have all these different conversations that have been going on for about the past generation. many different people talking to each other, with each other, at each other, past each other oftentimes, about the history of slavery in new england. the memory of that history and the politics of that memory. i try to bring together these conversations in the book, and use them to narrate a new and more comprehensive, yet accessible history of new england savory. and short, i stand on the shoulders of people who have been in the trenches doing this work for the past 25 years. in that sense, i viewed a book not only as an end. it synthesizes 25 years of scholarship to tell the history. it is also a big deal. it provides a set of facts, a framework and a starting point for future conversations. how do i marry this conversation, these kinds of four conversations we've seen come together. i discuss the lives of enslaved africans and indigenous people in new england. how their enslavement was instrumental to the colourization of the region and how slavery and colonization were to process is designed to transform new england into a place that has served the regions of white settled population, especially the most elite settlers. all three of those are tall orders in and of themselves. but to do that and about 60,000 words -- that's about 150 to 175 pages, if you are wondering. it's not much at all. to make it approachable to the reading public. these were no small tasks. short length, make it readable. make sure it's readable. indeed, the hardest part of writing the book was actually not what to research and right. i had 25 years of excellent source material from academics, researchers. but rather, how. how to create a book that is short, yet comprehensive. yet readable. readable, yet sensitive to the subject matter. many of you bought copies. i hope. the book is both a chronological and topical narrative that opens with the colonization of new england in the 16 twenties and 16 thirties. it ends in the early 19th century with the process of emancipation. to write some coherence, it's a long chronology. it's a big history, the book uses one organizing theme. connections. i look at the connection between new england slavery and slavery in enslaved societies of other parts of -- i look at the connection of slavery in new england to a larger social economic, political development of the region. finally, i look at how those two types of connections, connections to other slaves societies, to the deliver the development of new england, how those two connections shape the lives of enslaved people and how and sleeved peoples shaped those connections. it is a tall order, but nevertheless, the book opens by examining the connection between slavery and colonization. is anyone familiar with the history of slavery in new england? there is this kind of ethical moment. for the longest time, they narrated as the beginning of slavery. it was in 16 38. in that year, the ship, the desire sailed into the austin harbor and john wind thrown recorded a cargo on board the desire. it was sugar, there was salt, and he also listed african captives. 16 38. this is the starting date. over the past 15 years or so, historians have really begun to challenge that as a foundational moment in the history of slavery in new england. they have done it in two ways. the first is pretty, obviously, there were enslaved people in new england before 16 38. we have direct eyewitness testimonies from the early 16 thirties, the presence of enslaved africans. but the more important part, and where the scholarships have really gone since and where my book really tries to develop this, is not only studying the desire when he came back to new england, that the desire when it left. the desire was based out of boston. historians began looking into what did the desire ship to the west indies to purchase the salt and sugar and african captives? in the hole of the desire four a number of indian captives. between the year 16 36 and 16 38, the colonies of massachusetts, rhode island, connecticut went to war against these people. the war yielded hundreds of captives. many of them were enslaved locally in new england towns. we know a couple of hundred at least sold out of their -- they are sold out of new england to the west indies for their exchange for african captives. we see the direct connection between slavery and colonization. slavery served into a purpose. first, it served the purpose of removing indigenous people from their lands to open it for english settlers. what better way to remove people and to tear them away, sell them away from their homeland? this allows for the rapid expansion of the new england colonies, both large numbers of english immigrants, high reproduction rates. they quickly expand into the interior, and that creates labor shortages. especially in areas that had been settled early. boston, salem, places like that. they need labor. the use african slave labor to supplement sleeve labor as a whole. you see the process of exchanging native captives for african captives, and that is the foundation of slavery in new england, beginning in the 16 thirties. that process is going to continue with -- through the 16 seventies. as the cycle suggests, central to it was new england's connection to the west indies. especially the growing plantation economies there. the english settled the west indies about the same time as new england in the 16 twenties. they arrived in barbados and later wrote islands. very quickly, these islands are completely colonized and turned over to sugar cultivation. almost the entire islands are. they aren't entirely stripped of forced and any piece of land is planted for sugar king. eventually, and used enslaved africans to work those plantations. these islands, because they completely been stripped of their forced, they are only growing sugar cane. they need food. they need provisions for that and sleeved labor force. they need supplies, like timber, for building and for burning. they need livestock for food and labor. they turn to new england. as early as the 16 thirties you see new england years selling the provisions to the west indies. it is used to fuel the plantation there -- in exchange new england or's receive sugar -- it forms a symbiotic relationship between the two regions. new england and the west indies. first barbados, antigua and leader, jamaica. there is a symbiotic relationship between the two. this in the arctic relationship extends beyond the economic. it is very much economic, but there is a considerable amount of cultural exchanges. some of the earliest quite graduates of harvard where the sons of west indian planters. there is extensive intermarriage between elite merchant families in new england and planter families in the west indies. further solidifying those economic ties. and the new england colonies begin borrowing heavily from the slave societies in the caribbean to create their own systems of slavery here. for example, massachusetts barred slave law and customs governing -- directly from barbados. most enslaved people who arrived in the region, like south africans, spent time in the west indies before they arrived there. they spent a couple of months writing on a slave ship. but they spent a considerable amount of time in the caribbean. using this caribbean connection as a starting point, my book then turns and explores the way in which enslaved people arrived in new england. 20,000 enslaved africans are right between the 16 thirties and 1775. they came to comprise about 4% of the region's population. that's another place where you have to stop and kind of question the way in which the history of slavery in new england has been -- in other ways which historians have pushed back, four others have pushed back against the importance of slavery in new england is that there were demographic numbers. it's only 4% of the population. how important could actually be? well there are two answers to that that the book takes on. the first is, when you look in specific regions, the enslaved population is significantly higher. boston is about 12 to 15% enslaved. newport, rhode island, about 25% and sleep. urban areas, a large enslaved population. it is not just the urban areas, which is the other thing historians would say. this is a mistake i made my first book. i said yeah, new england as a whole other different -- it didn't matter for boston. this book reveals that there is significant slave populations in other parts of the region as well. rural areas. in 1750, massachusetts had a population of 550 people. 50 of them were enslaved. in southern rhode island, home to large sleeve holdings. families who had owned thousands of acres of grasslands. they had vast herds of cattle on them. it would own large and sleeved labor forces. mostly women who weekend process the dairy products from the cattle to ship all over the place mostly to the west indies. you see slave holdings in the south county of rhode island. 40, 50, 60 enslaved people. we are talking rivaling plantations. highly localized, but nonetheless, a significant slave holding. it belies that kind of 4%. the other piece of this, near the way in which a pushback is going back to that caribbean connection. while they were not large numbers of enslaved person -- and sleeve people in new england, the entire economy revolved around the business of slavery. the selling of provisions to the plantations. the transportation of enslaved people throughout the americans, but also the transatlantic slave trade. i'll get to that in a second. the entire economy revolved around enslavement. mark peterson just published this book on boston. he phrased it well when he said boston was a slave society where most of the enslaved people lived elsewhere. that is what we could see for new england as well. the demographics -- i pushed back against getting caught up in the demographics for reasons i just explained, but also in which the way you see white new england people embracing slave trade. they embraced slave treating from africa but within the americas as a form of commerce. the colony of rhode island became the center of sleeve treating an olive british north america. if you take all of the slave wages from the colonial period, and you condemn up, they would not equal those of road islands. road island is by far the center of the british north american slave trade. it rivals those of the west indies as well. it is an extensive slave traded central to the economy of the colony. that is how i set up the second chapter. pushing back against the demographic facts to talking about the ways in which enslaved people arrived in new england and then pushed back those narratives. most important and chapter to, i keep the bulk of it to exploring the lives of five individuals trafficked into new england, and their stories and experiences of arriving in the region and being enslaved. i want to read a short passage from the book about one of these men. some of you might be familiar with. standing on the gallows in cambridge, massachusetts of september 1755 marked a quote negro man belonging to a captain delivering a speech to a large crowd while awaiting his execution. since to hang and had his dead body on display for poisoning his master, he offered repentance, but also provided a short biography of his life. according to his confession, mark was born in a slavery in barbados. some time in the year 1725. he was sold away from the island as a young boy, probably around the age of eight where he could be put to work. when he arrived in boston, he was sold to a successive masters. one, a grass worker named mr. salt or. he was especially kind to mark having quote, taught him to read and educated him as salt are must not have been that kind because he sold him to another master who then sold him to john. to work and a foundry as a property skilled middle worker. mark toiled, working as an iron worker in boston charleston until he finally grew tired of the abuse. mark's story helps to illustrate an important trend in new england slavery that is easy to overlook when we discuss the slave trade to the region. many enslaved people that arrived in new england were actually born in the west indies and trafficked appear as children many times. there are natives of the caribbean. it shows the depth of the caribbean connection. this is so important to delve into these individual lives. it helps to prevent stereotyping most enslaved people in new england. it allows us to really see their backgrounds and flush them out as who they were as people. from there, the book has three chapters exploring the institution of slavery in new england and the lives of enslaved people and the region. these chapters look at how slave law, slave labor -- i directly -- early 18th century would find enslaved people working in every part of the economy, whether it was in domestic servitude, and household, was women providing services and households. men prove being -- every major colonial industry, road making, distilling -- enslaved labor with central, especially in urban areas like boston. you see extensive use of acts and sleeved labor. they were everywhere by the early 18th century. deeply ingrained in economy. we also look at the resistance of slavery. what allows me to narrowed the stories any kind of comes back to what i just told about mark, is that the records here are really rich. the court records, for example. the account books kept by merchants and manufacturers, led private letters and diaries. prince sources such as newspapers. it gives us a really good sense of what life was like for enslaved people. for example, and one of the major collections for the colony of massachusetts were in separate files. there are all the court file papers for the colony massachusetts as a whole. in there, there is hundreds of testimonies and depositions to enslave people. certainly they are biased. they are testifying on certain cases of witnesses. the plaintiffs, the defendants. they are also talking about their everyday lives, who they encountered, what they know, we know. you can actually kind of hear their voices through these documents. that is unique for understanding slavery in an english speaking world until the 19th century. the records here are really rich. you could find them everywhere. anywhere you look, in the records from the 1700s you will find the presence of slavery in the documentary record. that allows us to narrate and tell the story of enslaved people. what they did for work. did they marry? but the relationship between enslaved parents and their children were. you could see all of these facets and the documents and the book describes those stuff. the final chapter of the book explores the american revolution and its impact on slavery. the revolution, in many ways, provided the impetus for slavery in new england, ideological and economic reasons. more significantly, it created opportunities for enslaved people to strike out for their own freedom. through activism. military service, or simply running away. the opportunities created by the revolution opened up the whole world of possibilities. in terms of writing this book, this is my favorite part to research. the revolution. my first book cut short. i did not want to deal with the revolution. i do in this one deal with the revolution. example, if you look at the 1790 federal census for the state of connecticut, in the 1790 federal census, they only list -- who is the head of house? they will list the race of the household or. if you look at the colony of connecticut, if you find all the african american men who were head of house in 1790 in connecticut, 20% of them were veterans of the continental army. it could link their freedom to service in the continental army. it's amazing. disproportionately, african american men in new england fought in the continental army. they could link their freedom to that service. integrated army. of course, the american revolution had two sides. there's plenty of evidence of enslaved people joining the british as well. one of my favorite stories i found was of a man named poppy fleet. he belonged to a -- tommy he was a printer and boston. rabid patriot. poppies appearance of the records -- he comes and goes in the records for a 25 year period the beginning in 1774 and leaning up through 17 90s. his first appearance is a runaway act. he pulls an ad because poppy has run away. he did not run away from thomas fleet. he ran away from jail. he broke out of jail. many enslaver's in new england, if they could not control their bonds men and women, they would put them in jail. send them to jail. let the colony deal with it. that's what happened to poppy. he broke out. he disappears in the record again. his next appearance in the record is march 17th, 76. 1776 to be precise. evacuation day. there is a record when the british army decamped from new york city at the end of the war of independence, 1783, by that point, about 3000 african americans were living in and around new york city's, working for the british military. the british military evacuate some. when the officers records all of the people of african descent who left. he reports their names, their spouses, their ages. how they ended up in british service. poppy fleet appears in the records. he appears and beside his name it says evacuated the army from boston. we know he evacuated from -- with the british army. he lived in new york city for the duration of the war where he worked for a loyalist printer named alexander robinson. he moved to halifax, nova scotia. it appears he may have received land. he continued working for robinson, publishing the royal american cassette until 1786, when robinson decided he was going to leave and move to prince edward island. poppy once against disappears from the records. he appears again in 70 91. departing for sierra leone. it is a colony the british found for brett glory lists, living in london to resettle in west africa. circumstantial evidence -- circumstantial evidence suggests that poppy was the first prettier -- printer in sierra leone. you could see the way in which the way it forces the revolution. it moved enslaved around -- because of stories like poppy fleet and stories of those heads of households and connecticut, that chapter on the american revolution ends on a cautiously optimistic note. by the mid 17 eighties, slavery had no legal standing in the new england states. in theory. enslaved people were rapidly becoming free. in theory. it had been abolished. in theory. there were real possibilities for free people to become equal members of the new united states. in theory. the epilogue of the book is much, much less optimistic. it examines all of those in theories and put them into context. demonstrating the ways that enslaved were systematically denied their freedoms. disenfranchised. segregated and any alienated from white society. in the process of studying this revolutionary era, it was a term selling out. this process began in the 17 sixties through the 17 nineties. both ex and sleeved and free black people were sold out of new england. many of them were -- every new england state had passed laws against this, but it continued. the work of abolitionist came to be really composed of trying to help people who had been kidnapped and recover them to petition the government to have them found and brought back. significant numbers of enslaved and free black new england people were sold out of the region. many ended up in atlantic canada. their long-standing ties between new england and nova scotia, for example. the maritime economies in nova scotia could use that sort of an sleeved labor. had worked hear new england. so for example, if you take a look at loyalists newspapers, they also published runaway sleeve ads. occasionally the ad was the -- it would say i believe they are trying to get home to massachusetts. the numbers are hard to get a especially there is no illegal activity. take a look at blacks the rights activists. the attempts to lobby the massachusetts -- the selling out practice. i would estimate as many as 1000 people were trafficked out of new england. 20,000 people over the entire colonial period. we are talking about a 20th of that population is trafficked out of that revolutionary era. this suggests the sort of lost promises of freedom. not only do you have selling out. you have the rise of formal segregation. you have the marginalization from the labor force after the revolution. you have the rise of scientific racism. the application of racist principles to public policy. many free people just leave new england entirely. many black veterans, for example just settled away. i never returned home. others struggled to make a living, drifting from town to town. being chased out by town authorities. looking for work. as all this was happening, what was happening in white society gas? here's a second reading from my book. as blacks left the region or struggled to make a living, new england's white population never faced the consequences of slavery. rather, they enjoyed all the benefits of generations of sleeve ownership with little regard to those who suffered under it. even sympathetic whites or in slavery's who realized the horrors of their ways -- poor whites, many of whom never owned slaves embraced racism in the marginalization of people of color. not only did that less in the competition in job markets but gave the poor whites the satisfaction of racial superiority. slavery dwindled into new england, many whites including those who owned slaves beginning to find themselves, fundamentally different from other americans, especially those in the south. you england was free soil. so rich in liberty that slavery could never take deep root. slavery, this line of thought went, was never important -- economy was only practice by a few wealthy families and was a largely benevolent institution. most importantly, white new england people realize the heirs of the airways during the revolution and abolish slavery forever. and crafting this narrative from a free new england, whites absolved themselves of the sense of slavery's. such a belief system allowed for whites to shift the blame for back poverty away from the legacy of slavery and onto individual paneling. 's under this logic, if people cannot thrive in a land of liberty and opportunity, they had no one to blame for it but themselves. white new england people in short, it's like a season history. it is that facet that reverberates across time to us today and into this evening. the ability of white new englanders to totally distance themselves from slavery helped craft many of the myths about slavery in new england. myths you may be familiar with. it was economically an important. only a few people were enslaved and slavery never really took root in new england. that morally superior new englanders saw the heirs of their ways and quickly abolished it, or perhaps, slavery never existed in new england, or at least not in the foremost americans would recognize as such. at the very least, my hope is that this book is able to confront and help fight against those myths. thank you so much. (applause) i'd be happy to take a few questions. do wait for the microphone as they call you. >> who are the earliest voices against slavery, and second, what is your view on reparations? >> oh boy. into the earliest anti slavery activity -- you'll start seeing some anti slavery activity by the late 17 or early 18th century. but there is something i should mention first. enslaved people were never fans of slavery. it's the first thing. the second thing is in terms of white sentiment against slavery, you begin to see this in the late 18 century. quaker,'s rhode island, so many firsts anti slavery. it has much more to do with the dynamics of the quaker community. the way in which the ability to own and hold other people as property to do what you want with those people, the way it hurts the community. you see a similar argument coming out of samuel, and a justice. a puritan a promised jurist in massachusetts. he writes on a pamphlet called the selling of joseph, which is against slavery. it's concern about slavery is that enslaved people constitute -- they could never be incorporated into the body politic. they are always foreign, alien. that is why we have to get rid of slavery. it would disrupt the community. a sort of abolition isn't that we recognize a such as advocating for the end of slavery, perhaps the enfranchisement if -- that's much more kind of towards the revolution in the 17 sixties and 17 seventies. one of the things i talk about, the way -- so much of that is individual initiative. them filing lawsuits. things like that. there is a community of abolitionist lawyers who helped them to file suits and petitions, things like that. the question of reparations. i'm not comfortable answering this, first of all. i draw from -- the question is, what constitutes reparations? that's the first question. one of the thing tani says as we all will share in any sort of reparations that would happen, including african americans. this would be redistributing public goods to help communities that have been disproportionately affected by the legacies of slavery. anyone who pays taxes would be paying into that. i think that is the road to go. i think -- the other side of it, and where i will be much more comfortable talking about as a historian and educator, not the sort of politics side of it and how feasible it is, is the stories have to be told. they should be part of any interpretive programming at historic sites. their stories deserve to be told just as much as the founding fathers. there is an education component to reparations that is an easy answer for me as a historian, which is to say, the stories should be front and center in our interpretations. they should be present in the history in the way that they have not been. i think that is the first step ahead for education. >> i have a question about the 20,000 that you estimate that were enslaved in new england. i'm wondering if you base that on the 1765 slave census. because my reading of that slave census was that it was only persons above 16 that were counted. based on that, wouldn't you think the number could be higher than 20, 000, if you include those who were 16 and below? >> yes. yes. about 20,000 people, looking through the records, corroborating other -- that's not taking into account people having reproduction. smuggling. 20,000 is a conservative estimate. it does not include hundreds of carolina native people that are trafficked into new england as well. there is probably a significantly larger number. the conservative estimate is 20,000 for that region. the sense is taken by governor surely, or on the dramatically undercounted enslaved people. they don't do things like enumerate people under the age of 16. for example, the very large percentage of enslaved people in new england were children. the largest percentage of insulin -- slave holders, middle class people today, midland people as they would be called in the 18th century. they would prefer to buy children, because they were cheaper. you could raise them in your household. you could fit them into the system. they remain property for life. by the time they are adults, they are worth a hefty sum of money and they are skilled and experienced. a desire for enslaved children. you could see peter requesting slaves. he wanted a 12 year old boy. i think there is, especially in the official records, a drastic undercounting because of the issue not having children. and sleeved people were taxable property. you englanders did not like paying taxes. it moved in behind it enslaved people. you could see this dramatically in boston, where the largest and sleeve population lived in massachusetts. there is a record taken -- about 15 or over 1500 enslaved people in boston, in like 1752, then you look at the sleeve census in 1754, and there is only 900. what happened to the 600 people over two years? it's dramatically being undercounted. it's one of the things that have been led to historical interpretations and look at the records and say there's just not that many. it's not important. look at the numbers. i think there is dramatic undercounting of being very conservative. it's so hard to get at them. >> i have a question. it is preamble to your book. i was struck when you were talking about folks in 16 thirties since leaving people, just as people came here with the skill anne -- they came with the skill to make someone a slave. they also came with a societal permission as to what they could get away with. my question is kind of, without going back to egypt, greece and rome. going to britain. magma canada. was it a permission that was granted for native peoples? non christian peoples? for people with brown skin? where did the skills come from, and what was the permission that was granted? >> it was a lot going on. it's a big question. slavery largely disappear some england by the 14 hundreds. slavery largely disappears. that said, other forms of -- apprenticeship, servitude's, they did have experience of using labor even in the absence of slavery. but things happen in the 16th century. they're key for understanding what is happening in new england. the first is, englishman begin traveling abroad. they go all over the world. he began writing about with encounter, with a scene. one of the places they spend a lot of time and is in the caribbean and latin america. by the mid 16th century where they visit places like cuba, mexico, peru, they see large numbers of enslaved africans. the portuguese and the spanish used. but this does in their minds, is it links slavery to blacks. slavery to africans. through these travels -- it's a little more complicated than that, but through these travels it's one of the things that happen. the other development that comes out of the 16th century and into the 17th century is the nature of colonization. english colonization. we think about the virginia -- the massachusetts bay company. the plymouth company. these are private entities with broad powers to design their own walls. they could kind of do what they want within a certain reason, and remember, they are 3000 miles away from any -- they can craft walls. what happens in the colony massachusetts -- in 16 41 they openly legalize slavery. ironically, it's called the body of liberal -- liberties. it deals with the bond slavery. if you read it, it would first thing they outlawed slavery. it says bond slavery is banned except -- it's people who are captured in just wars. i.e., non christians. native people. people were strangers. africans who are foreigners. strangers among us is the language. those who are sold to us is the third. now you've just accounted for the ability to capture native people as slaves, because they are captured in just wars. i will come back to that in the second. as well, for the facilitation of selling people in new england. either african or indigenous. those who are foreign or strangers. africans. it reads like, oh they outlined it, but it is racially codified. they are saying that people of european descent cannot be enslaved. anybody else that comes or is captured in or candy. the other final point in the question is the idea of just wars. this is deliberately. one of the shocking things -- i talk about the cycle of indigenous captives being sold. it struck me as just how open and deliberate and shameless this was. there is a letter from 16 45 from emmanuel downing. it was john wynne threats brother-in-law. a prominent magistrate. in this letter, downing writes to wind through up and says we should start a war with the native americans. they are causing problems. it will be a just war, because they are not christian. we will be able to take them captive, and we will be able to sell those captives to the west indies, and he calls them more's, but obtain africans. he is worried -- by 16 45 he's already worried that salem is running short of labor's. all the young people don't want to stick around. the moment they have an opportunity they go and settle elsewhere. they settle land. a move away from the town. where do you get the labor force? you have to pay them. wages are high in this context. so you bring in africans. they will work -- essentially, when african could be provided for 20 africans for one, is what has ratio he worked out in his mind in terms of provision. it is a much cheaper system of labor. just open, advocating. this wind threat shuts down, but in any sort of hint of diplomatic issues with indigenous people, you are ceding these letters all of a sudden -- people are being capitalized. they see opportunity to capture indigenous people to sell and bring back. i promised i was going to and there, but i will add one more thing. this is a cycle that continues until the war of 16 75 and 76 when thousands of indigenous captives are sold out of new england. upwards of 2500 people are captured and sold to the west indies. most of them are actually sold by the company of massachusetts. by the colony, trying to recover cost of the war. so many indigenous captives were being sold out of new england to barbados and jamaica, that both of those colonies banned the further importation of indigenous new englanders. they are afraid that so many warriors are coming in, they banned the further importation of indigenous warriors from new england. this tells you the scope and the volume of that exchange. my apologies for going on forever. yes. >> are you aware of any changes that are happening with textbooks, history -- has anyone been contacting you about trying to update and present the real stories so that children will have a better idea of what really happened? >> for me personally, no. i know there is a push to get my book in high schools from the press. most of my work is actually done on public history fronts. anne i work with old north, a few other groups. they have begun to move the story of slavery to the front and in their education interpretive programs. i think it's like the dam is going to break. you will start to see these changes happening in textbooks and things like that. one of the remarkable things of having given this book talk a number of times now, is how many people come out afterwards and say never learned the story. i did not know this. i am hoping -- i think of myself as part of the conversation that is going on. i hope that is about to break and it we will see it spread all the way down to elementary schools. yes. >> what made you become so interested in this topic? >> that is a long story. i will try to be short. it started as pragmatic. as an undergraduate, i knew i wanted to study history. i was interested in colonial american history and slavery. i always thought it would be a historian of the south because of my interest and slavery. i get to boston college and realize that graduate school takes a long time. you want to be a little more pragmatic. i had this idea of comparing all these different colonies. i had to learn a couple of foreign languages and things. i just realized i did not want to be in graduate school. so i started looking and dug some reading. i realize there was not vastly to reach around slavery. there hadn't been anything on boston. there is history of slavery in new york, philadelphia, but why not boston? the third major colonial port city? i said i will take a look. one of my graduate advisers in boston college informed me about those files i mentioned in my top. this massive collection of court filed papers. he said it's really hard to navigate, that go take a look. lo and behold, i found all these testimonies and depositions of enslaved people from boston. i had never seen that before in the english language records. i had read about it from the spanish, which gives slavery. but never in english records. this is amazing! so no i could talk about the sleeve people and their lives and the journey. i became very excited about it. but this particular -- and i ended up writing first book. this book in particular came out of the frustration with writing. i would -- i embarked on the research for the first book. i wanted a short, readable history so i could have a reference work. there were books that work but they were not very short. they required a lot of reading. that's what i wanted to do here. i want to to have a pragmatic concern, but when i got into the actual process of writing, i realized we are kind of at a crossroads with all of these different people talking to each other. in the process of writing the first book, i met so many other scholars who were working on slavery. i know so many public historians, educators, activists who were doing this work. i thought this is bigger than just my kind of scholarly needs. this is a public conversation. any other questions? (applause) >> in your research, did you come across anything specific to hingham? >> you see all these towns and records but i did not come across anything in particular to hingham. although, my first book, i wrote about a couple of slave holders. hingham was part of the county. a couple of sleeve holders there. thank you all! (applause) big night this month, we're featuring american history tv programs as our preview of what's available every weekend on c-span three. tonight, oral histories with footsoldiers from the 1960s civil rights movement. beginning with gloria grenell, who thinks about participating in the 1960 lunch counter sit in front of tests during her time as a student at richmond virginia union university. she also describes the culture shock she experienced as a california attending commonwealth in virginia. what's the night beginning at eight eastern, enjoy american history tv this week and every weekend on c-span three. gloria grinnell talked about her time in the sit in protests and described culture shock to experience with california tending college in virginia. this is part of the civil rights oral history project initiate in 2009, the american folk life center of the library of congress and the southern oral history program at the university of north carolina. >> i'll go back to my grandparents, if i may. because, in a way, it was a civil rights type activity. my grandfather, these were

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