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

FAIN: BH-50419-11

Apprend Foundation (Durham, NC 27713-2219)
Laurel Sneed (Project Director: March 2011 to April 2016)

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

"Crafting Freedom: Black Artisans, Entrepreneurs and Abolitionists of the Antebellum Upper South" consists of two one-week NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops held during summer 2012 for eighty school teachers on African-American artisans during the antebellum period, at sites in North Carolina. The workshop uses the careers of free African-American artisans Thomas Day, a cabinetmaker, and Elizabeth Keckly, a dressmaker, to illuminate the relationship between race-based slavery and African-American enterprise in the antebellum American South. The project utilizes a number of North Carolina sites, including Day's home and shop, his church, Burwell School (where Keckly was enslaved), and the Stagville tobacco plantation. The faculty includes project director Laurel Sneed (Apprend Foundation), John Michael Vlach (American studies, George Washington University), Juanita Holland (independent historian), Peter Wood (history, Duke University), and Michele Ware (English, North Carolina Central University); the program also includes presentations by African-American artisans.

Associated Products