In June 1874, young Philadelphia photographer William H. Rau set sail to the Chatham Islands off the coast of New Zealand, serving as an assistant photographer in the United States government’s Transit of Venus Expedition which studied and recorded the movement of Venus between the Sun and Earth. This fall the United States and New Zealand are commemorating the 150th anniversary of this first scientific collaboration between the two countries with a series of events and exhibitions, including at the Library Company. The exhibition, “We Did not See the Sun for a Single Moment:” William Rau and the Transit of Venus Expedition, curated by Sarah Weatherwax, explores Rau’s experience during this expedition through a display of related photographs, texts, and ephemera.

We invite Library Company members to a special event in honor of this commemoration on Friday, December 6th, 2-3:30pm. In celebration of this special anniversary, Senior Curator of Graphic Arts Sarah Weatherwax will provide an exhibition overview as well as a review of select collection materials illustrating the long and extensive career of Transit of Venus photographer William H. Rau. An exhibition viewing and reception will follow the presentation where attendees will have the opportunity to meet organizers of this international celebration.

Space is limited for this event.

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On plantations across the Americas, enslavers used the so-called “driving system” to solve their fundamental problem: how to extract labor from captive workers who had every reason to resist. Starting in the seventeenth-century English Caribbean, enslavers appointed enslaved Black men—and sometimes women—to supervise and punish other enslaved laborers. This talk explores enslaved drivers’ complex roles on Caribbean plantations, where they found themselves trapped between the insatiable labor demands of white plantation authorities and the constant resistance of other enslaved people.  Browne shows how drivers were at the center of enslaved people’s working lives, social relationships, and struggles against slavery.

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Sarah Gronningsater is delighted to join Carolyn Zola for a conversation about Sarah’s new book, The Rising Generation: Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom (Penn Press, 2024). The Rising Generation tells a new story about the long history of emancipation in the United States as it follows the cradle-to-grave experiences of a remarkable generation of black New Yorkers who were born into quasi-freedom after the American Revolution and reached adulthood on the eve the Civil War.  Gronningsater examines the role this generation played in advocating for equality before the law, excellent public education, and the end of slavery nationwide. In a broad sense, this generation helped shape important changes to the U.S. Constitution as well as groundbreaking federal civil rights legislation.

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