Seen and Heard: Women's Stories of Enslavement and Resistance at Van Cortlandt Manor

FAIN: MD-296310-24

Historic Hudson Valley (Tarrytown, NY 10591-1203)
Elizabeth L. Bradley (Project Director: June 2023 to present)

Development of an immersive, digital experience examining the story of five enslaved women at Van Cortlandt estate and their quest for freedom.  

Historic Hudson Valley (HHV) seeks funding to support the exploratory stages of an immersive digital multimedia project that invites visitors into a specific place and time – New York’s Van Cortlandt Manor during the Revolutionary War – and introduces them to Bridget and Jin, two enslaved women who planned to use the chaos of wartime as an opportunity to self-liberate to British lines. Their story, which is grounded in primary documents from HHV’s archives, will serve as the jumping-off point for an exploration of domestic enslavement and resistance at Van Cortlandt Manor from the American Revolution through gradual emancipation acts to the legal abolition of slavery in New York in 1827, using the interior spaces of the manor as its design framework. Through the individual stories of enslaved women, HHV will call attention to the drawn-out process of gradual emancipation in the North and contribute to a greater public understanding of the complicated history of slavery in America.