Slavery North Welcomes its Inaugural Cohort of Fellows in Fall 2024

Back in January we shared some super fantastic news when Slavery North, a new University of Massachusetts Amherst initiative, garnered a mega grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for $2.65 million dollars. (And that’s USD, baby!) Originally founded as the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery in 2020, our fearless leader and founding director, Charmaine A. Nelson took her ground-breaking institute with her to her new university in 2022, re-envisioning the project to encompass the study of slavery in the US North.

What is Slavery North? Well, it’s a one-of-a-kind academic and cultural destination where scholars, thinkers, artists, and cultural producers build community and produce research and cultural outcomes that transform our understanding of the neglected histories of Transatlantic Slavery in temperate climate regions where our enslaved ancestors became a minority population. That means they were outnumbered by white folks and indigenous people. If you haven’t noticed, these regions are understudied and under-represented since most scholarly attention (and cultural energy for things like movies) is directed towards tropical locations where plantations took root. Therefore, far less is known about how our ancestors were transported to places like Halifax, Quebec City, and Toronto, and how they survived lives of bondage in cold weather climates after many had been born or raised in Africa or the Caribbean.

At the heart of Slavery North is a vibrant fellowship program that welcomes students, scholars, and artists. Applicants compete to become a fellow by submitting a research proposal detailing their individual research project which must fit within at least one of Slavery North’s five mandate areas.

Drum roll please….Slavery North has proudly announced its inaugural cohort of fellows who will begin working on their individual research projects this month. Who are these superstars? The cohort includes two visiting professors, a PhD candidate, and an artist-in-residence. While Prof. Jennifer DeClue of Smith College will be working on a hyper-local project to shed light on the lives and experiences of enslaved women in Western Massachusetts, Prof. Julia Jorati of UMass Amherst will research black anti-slavery authors, also in Massachusetts. Chris Gismondi of the University of New Brunswick will explore how gradual abolition in Upper Canada (Ontario) and Pennsylvania impacted black families. Lastly, fresh off his successful book The Stolen Wealth of Slavery (2024), independent investigative journalist David Montero’s research examines how Boston bankers profited from southern US slavery. Each fellow will determine the nature of their desired research outcomes and give a public lecture about their research, so stayed tuned.

Besides the work of these brilliant fellows, the Slavery North team will also produce research like art exhibitions, conferences, panels, and workshops. Why is this important? As black people in white-dominated countries we have come to lament and challenge the ongoing injustices and indignities which we suffer in our daily lives. Driving while black, shopping while black, walking while black, dining while black, bird watching while black, and working while black come to mind. This racism, of course, did not shoot fully formed from the earth in the twenty-first century. Dear friends, it is of course the by-product of Transatlantic Slavery and the racist stereotypes, customs, policies, regulations, systems, laws, and logic that were entrenched and never cleaned up. Yet our white (Canadian) fellow citizens frequently minimize or deny our suffering altogether and contest our ability to narrate our own lives. (Hell, they even try to tell us who or who isn’t black!)

Redress, atonement, and reconciliation cannot begin without a general knowledge of these histories and an honest confrontation with the catastrophic impacts of slavery on enslaved peoples and their descendants (that’d be us). Slavery North is a conduit through which to confront and heal these traumatic histories. It is an academic initiative with a powerful social justice mission. And we say Amen to that!