Confronting Racial Injustice Series: Slavery, Wealth Creation, and Intergenerational Wealth (Free Massachusetts Historical Society Event)

Nicole Maskiell, University of South Carolina; Elon Cook Lee, National Trust for Historic Preservation; moderated by Jared Ross Hardesty, Western Washington UniversityThis program is in partnership with Northeastern University Law School’s Criminal Justice Task Force

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From the seventeenth century to the twenty-first, slavery has been central to creating wealth and generating race-based inequality in Massachusetts. Family fortunes, institutional endowments, and public budgets in the commonwealth have all benefitted from the spoils of slavery. This panel discussion between academic and public historians explores Massachusetts’s connections to slavery and the slave trade, the wealth — and the poverty — slavery created and bequeathed, and how the legacies of slavery are reflected in injustices that haunt Massachusetts to this day.

Moderator:

Jared Ross Hardesty, Associate Professor of History, Western Washington University

Speakers:

Nicole Maskiell, Assistant Professor of History, University of South Carolina; Elon Cook Lee, Director of Interpretation and Education, National Trust for Historic Preservation