Crafting Freedom: Black Artisans, Entrepreneurs, and Abolitionists in the Antebellum Upper South

FAIN: BH-50409-10

Apprend Foundation (Durham, NC 27713-2219)
Laurel Sneed (Project Director: March 2010 to July 2012)

Two one-week Landmarks workshops for eighty school teachers on African-American artisans during the antebellum period, using sites in North Carolina.

The proposed Landmarks workshop "Crafting Freedom:Thomas Day and Elizabeth Keckly, Black Artisans and Entrepreneurs in the Making of America" is centered around three landmarks in the North Carolina Piedmont: the Union Tavern, home and shop of the celebrated free black cabinetmaker Thomas Day (1801-ca. 1861); the Burwell School, girlhood home of the formerly enslaved dressmaker-turned-Lincoln White House-insider Elizabeth Keckly (1817-1907); and Stagville, a major 19th-century tobacco plantation with intact slave quarters and other slave-built structures. These places provide a historically evocative environment in which to uncover the hidden history of African-American artisans and entrepreneurs before the Civil War. By repeating the "Crafting Freedom" workshops in 2011, we will be able to meet the needs of more educators, as well as those who were highly qualified yet not able to be accommodated in the previous nine offerings due to space limitations.