Everyday Resistance Seminar Session One: Black Reconstructions of America Throughout the Nineteenth Century

Everyday Resistance Seminar: Black Reconstructions of America Throughout the Nineteenth Century

Session 1 — Family and Community Structures: Wednesday, January 10, 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM ET

 $125 Members | $150 Non-Members
Early bird discount available before December 1! Contact the Library Company for details.
(Cost includes all three sessions)

“The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive powerful society.” The late poet and modern Civil Rights activist Maya Angelou’s words emphasize the often overlooked point that African American families have (across numerous generations) demonstrated their importance to their kin, communities, and the larger society. Moreover, African American families have always supported each other while directly challenging their oppressors with the expressed intention of demanding, through numerous ways, to establish a more equitable society where race and gender did not define one’s societal experiences.

This seminar session will center on the historical importance of African American families (as they defined them) throughout the nineteenth-century. It is well-known how African American families living through the Reconstruction Era battled federal government institutions and state-level policies over issues, including but not limited to definitions of familial structures and notions of legitimacy. In order to expand on the significance of these and other historical moments, Dr. Pinheiro’s discussion will highlight how African Americans—northern and southern, free and enslaved—formed families throughout the antebellum and Civil War Era that helped to support and empower each other every day through numerous actions, including decisions to (and to not) find wage-earning employment or expanding their family sizes by having formerly enslaved people (of all ages) fictive kin, as they battled a generations-long fight against white supremacy and patriarchy within the U.S.

Schedule for Everyday Resistance

Wednesday, January 10 | 6:00-7:30 PM ET

Wednesday, January 24 | 6:00-7:30 PM ET

Wednesday, February 7 | 6:00-7:30 PM ET

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