The Library Company of Philadelphia, in partnership with the American Philosophical Society, presents:
Black Declarations of Independence:
Before and After 1776
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | February 19th-20th, 2026
Thursday, February 19th
American Philosophical Society, 427 Chestnut Street
Registration | Opens at 2:30PM
Please arrive ahead of time to check-in, get your name tag, hang your coat, and grab a seat.
Light snacks, coffee, and refreshments will be available.
Welcome and Introduction | Begins at 3:00PM
Jim Downs, Director of the Program in African American History, Library Company of Philadelphia
Michelle McDonald, Director of the Library & Museum, American Philosophical Society
Panel 1 | Rewriting Revolution: Black Declarations of Independence (3:30PM - 5:00PM)
Speakers:
Grant Stanton
“‘A Natural Right to be Free’: A Declaration Before Independence.”
William Morgan
“Emancipating Freedom: Black Bostonians’ 1777 Response to the Declaration.”
John Garcia
“White Paper, Black Labor: Recovering the Lives of African American Papermakers During and After the Revolution.”
VanJessica Gladney
“Moses Sash: Declaring and Defining Independence in the Massachusetts Regulation of 1786 – 1787.”
Maria Ryan
“Singing for Suffrage: Black Women’s Performance as Internationalist Advocacy in Philadelphia, 1919.”
Andrew Maginn
“Reclaiming Black Liberation Narratives: Isaac Louverture’s l’Haïtiade.”
Chair:
Brenna Holland
American Philosophical Society, Director of Programs
Break: 5:00PM – 5:20PM
Opening Plenary (5:20PM - 6:30PM)
Introduction by:
Jim Downs, Director of the Program in African American History
Keynote Speakers:
Christopher Brown
Historian of the British empire and professor of history at Columbia University, with award-winning projects such as Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (2006)
Catherine Clinton
Denman Chair of American History at the University of Texas in San Antonio, Professor Emerita at Queen’s University Belfast, and a pioneering historian of American women, the American South, and the Civil War
Annette Gordon-Reed
Carl. M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University, and Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello (2008) and On Juneteenth (2021)
Nell Irvin Painter
Renowned historian, artist, author, and Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, Princeton University, with bestsellers such as Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (1996)
Chair:
Carla Peterson
Library Company of Philadelphia, Trustee Professor Emerita, English
Opening Reception (6:30PM - 7:30PM)
Please join us at APS for snacks and refreshments.
Friday, February 20th
American Philosophical Society, 427 Chestnut Street
Registration | Opens at 8:15AM
Please arrive ahead of time to check-in, get your name tag, hang your coat, and grab a seat.
Breakfast pastries and coffee will be provided in the morning, with light snacks, refreshments, and water available throughout the day.
Panel 2 | Intimate Declarations: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Making of Black Families (9:00AM - 10:20AM)
Speakers:
Simone Gulliver
“Omey Kirk, “Poor Relief”, and the Politics of Access in Early New York.”
Kasha Appleton
“Visions of Freedom for Black Mothers: Mary Ann, alias Julia v. Robert Duncan (1834).”
Laura Nelson
“The Church, The Abolitionist Archive, and the Making of Papered Freedom.”
Erika Piola
“Joy, Love, and Prosperity: The Nineteenth-Century Photograph Marriage Certificate of Greer Allen and Mary E. Foster.”
Rachel Hooper
“All Are Blest and Freed: Charlotte Forten Grimké’s List of Wedding Gifts as a Founding Document.”
Chair:
Wynn Eakins
Library Company of Philadelphia, Reference Librarian, Afro-Americana Subject Specialist
Break: 10:20am – 10:40am
Panel 3 | Uneven Declarations: Black Self-Emancipation Before and After 1776 (10:40AM - 12:00PM)
Speakers:
Angelica Williams
“‘Here Children I leave you something’: Personal Connection, Property, and Narrative in the Will of Peter Fleet.”
Matthew Mason
“‘Washing & Ironing in his Service’: Black Women, Honor, and Petitions to British Commanders.”
Sarah Pearlman Shapiro
“Attempts at Self-Emancipation: Susanah Mathewson enslaved in Providence, 1776.”
Carolyn Zola
“Hiding in Plain Sight: Self Emancipation and Market Selling in the Age of Gradual Emancipation.”
Jennifer Harbour
“Elizabeth Shorter’s letter to Lincoln requesting a pardon, 1863.”
Chair:
Michelle McDonald
American Philosophical Society, Director of the Library & Museum
Lunch (12:00PM - 1:30PM)
Lunch on your own – please see the APS list of recommended restaurants in the area.
Panel 4 | Aesthetic Declarations of Independence: Material Objects and the Visual Arts (1:30PM - 3:00PM)
Speakers:
Kelli Racine Barnes
“The Scarlet Cloak: Bet’s Flight, Fashion, and Freedom in 1776.”
Adam Thomas
“Lucy’s Bag of Feathers: Undeclared Black Independence in the Southampton County Rebellion.”
Jorden E. Sanders
“Biblical Currencies of the Wood-Webb Family’s Confederate Five-Dollar Bill.”
Jill DiMassimo
“Thomas Commeraw’s Stoneware: Independence in a Jar.”
Dolly Marshall
“Lessons in Liberty: Charlotte Forten Grimké and the 1876 Centennial.”
Hampton Smith
“1897 Meeting Minutes from the American Negro Historical Society.”
Chair:
Michael Idriss
Manager of the African American Interpretive Program, Museum of the American Revolution
Break: 3:00pm – 3:20pm
Panel 5 | Property as Declaration: Land, Ownership, and Black Independence (3:20PM - 4:40PM)
Speakers:
Gregory O’Malley
“David George’s Declarations of Independence.”
Brian Armstead
“The Oldest Black-Owned Land in America: Richard Allen’s Deed and Will as Declarations of Freedom.”
Jessica Millward
“(To) set my hand and affixed my seal: Using the Last Will and Testament of Charity Folks to tell stories of generational freedom.”
Jessica Leigh Hester
“Plots as Property: Sharing Financial Resources in the Cemetery.”
Jack McCarthy
“Robert Purvis’s This Monstrous Law: Robert Purvis’s Report on an 1850 Meeting at Byberry Hall Regarding the Fugitive Slave Law on an Anti-Slavery Meeting at Byberry Hall.”
Chair:
Hannah Wallace
Mother Bethel AME Church, Museum and Archive Manager of the Richard Allen Museum
Break: 4:40pm – 5:00pm
Closing Plenary (5:00PM - 6:10PM)
Keynote Speakers:
Vanessa Northington Gamble
University Professor of Medical Humanities at The George Washington University, internationally recognized expert on the history of American medicine, author of several widely acclaimed publications on racial and ethnic disparities in health care and bioethics
Elizabeth Hinton
Professor of History, Black Studies, and Law at Yale University, and author of New York Times Notables, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime (2016) and America on Fire (2021)
Heather Ann Thompson
Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (2016), with an upcoming release, Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage (2026)
Jonathan D.S. Schroeder
Historian, literary critic, lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design, and editor of John Swanson Jacobs’s long lost autobiographical slave narrative, The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery (2024)
Chair:
William Sturkey
University of Pennsylvania, Associate Professor of History
Closing Reception (6:10PM - 7:00PM)
Please join us at APS for snacks and refreshments.
Travel Information
We look forward to your attendance at the conference! Please review the information below as you make travel plans.
All participants must make arrangements for their own hotel accommodations. Please use this link to book a reservation with the Black Declarations Room Block at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown:
https://book.passkey.com/gt/221097724?gtid=cab36eb5408738d41c390fa0b1d13472
Please make your reservations before the Cut-Off Date of Thursday, 02/05/2026.
If you have any questions or concerns about your reservation, please contact the hotel directly.
The Library Company of Philadelphia
