Belonging: An Intimate History of Slavery and Family in Early New England with author Gloria McCahon Whiting

New England is often considered a cradle of liberty in American history, but it was also a cradle of slavery. From the earliest years of colonization, New Englanders bought and sold people, most of whom were of African descent. In Belonging, Gloria McCahon Whiting tells the region’s early history from the perspective of the people belonged to others and who struggled to maintain a sense of belonging among their kin. Through a series of meticulously reconstructed family narratives, she traces the contours of enslaved people’s intimate lives, laying bare the many obstacles to family stability faced by those in bondage. Whiting also charts Afro-New Englanders’ persistent demands for intimacy, and she shows how the work of making and maintaining relationships influenced the region’s law, religion, society, and politics. Ultimately, the actions of kinfolk in bondage played a pivotal role in bringing about the collapse of slavery in New England’s most populous state, Massachusetts. Learn more from her illustrated presentation and discussion with historian Kyera Singleton.

"Gloria McCahon Whiting’s extraordinary and deeply moving first book turns early American history inside out. Painstakingly researched and elegantly composed, Belonging recounts...how the intimate lives of Black families, the shattering story of America, is threaded through the archives, each passionate attachment and every wrenching separation."

—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

Gloria McCahon Whiting is E. Gordon Fox Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she teaches award-winning courses on early American history. She has published widely in academic journals and has spearheaded a public-facing project on slavery and the American Revolution, available at www.freedom-seekers.org. Belonging is her first book, and it has received many prizes, including the AHA Prize in American History, the John Winthrop Prize from the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize from Massachusetts Historical Society. Whiting holds a PhD from Harvard University.

Kyera Singleton is the Executive Director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters and Postdoctoral Fellow for the Slavery, Colonialism, and their Legacies Project at Tufts University. She holds a PhD from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in the Department of American Culture. She is a co-curator of the Boston Slavery Exhibit in Faneuil Hall and serves on the City of Boston’s Commemoration Commission and the Special Commission on the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution. Singleton has received an Official Citation from the Massachusetts’ State Senate for her work as a historian of slavery.

Presented by American Ancestors’ American Inspiration author series, Boston Public Library, and 10 Million Names

Our Special Thanks to American Inspiration Series Sponsors Susan K. and John D. Thompson