Author Talk and Signing: Michael E. Groth

HYDE PARK – The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum – and the Mid-Hudson Antislavery History Project – will present an author talk and book signing with Michael E. Groth author of Slavery And Freedom In The Mid-Hudson Valley on Sunday, November 5, 2017. The program will begin at 2:00 p.m. in Henry A. Wallace Center at the FDR Presidential Library and Home. Following the presentation, Groth will be available to sign copies of his book. This is a free public event but registration is required. Visit www.fdrlibrary.org.

Slavery And Freedom In The Mid-Hudson Valley focuses on the largely forgotten history of slavery in New York and the African American freedom struggle in the central Hudson Valley prior to the Civil War. Slaves were central actors in the drama that unfolded in the region during the Revolution, and they waged a long and bitter battle for freedom during the decades that followed. Slavery in the countryside was more oppressive than slavery in urban environments, and the agonizingly slow pace of abolition, constraints of rural poverty, and persistent racial hostility in the rural communities also presented formidable challenges to free black life in the central Hudson Valley.

Michael E. Groth, Professor of History at Wells College, explores how Dutchess County’s black residents overcame such obstacles to establish independent community institutions, engage in political activism, and fashion a vibrant racial consciousness in antebellum New York. By drawing attention to the African American experience in the rural Mid-Hudson Valley, this book provides new perspectives on slavery and emancipation in New York, black community formation, and the nature of black identity in the Early Republic.