New York's Enslaving Past: A Hudson Valley Reckoning - Webinar

When author Debra Bruno was growing up in the Hudson Valley village of Athens, she had no idea that New York had once been a slave society. And when she discovered that her Dutch ancestors had held on to slavery for as long as they could, bequeathing slaves to their dependents and selling off others, she knew she had to learn more. Her serendipitous encounter with Eleanor Mire, who descends from people her family enslaved, further enriched the story, which she described in a 2020 Washington Post Magazine article. Now she has expanded that research into a book: A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family (Cornell University Press - Three Hills, 2024), to be released on October 15. The book raises numerous questions: What is the responsibility of white descendants of enslavers? How would she define reparations? What do we need to know about American history? How did she never learn anything about slavery in New York when growing up? Bruno's talk will cover both a brief history of slavery in New York and the author’s journey to discovery. Registration info can be found on our site.