The Harvard Club of Washington Presents
The Reverse Underground Railroad: A Conversation with Prof. Richard Bell, Ph.D. '06, Award winning historian
Author: Stolen: The Astonishing Odyssey of Five Boys along the Reverse Underground Railroad
Rick Bell will be talking about his new research on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black-market network of human traffickers and slave traders who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War. Using historical sources and visceral images, he will introduce us to the gripping and true story of five boys who were kidnapped in the North and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South in 1825—and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to justice.
Dr. Richard Bell is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and is the author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home. He has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor for teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Historical Society, as an elected member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Date: Friday, August 28th
Time: 8.00am - 9.30am (AEST)
Cost: $20.00 (free for Harvard Club of Washington members). To book visit http://hcdc.clubs.harvard.edu/article.html?aid=1985