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Black Midwest History Matters: African American History at the 2021 MHA Conference

  • May 28, 2021

Four outstanding panels on African American Midwest history were held at the 2021 Midwestern History Association Conference, featuring leading scholars including documentary consulting producers Terrion Williamson and Erik McDuffie. Check back for links to the panel videos.

Panels and Panelists included:

Black Midwest History Matters: African American Life in the U.S. Heartland and the Struggle for Freedom

Erik McDuffie, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne

Courtney Pierre Joseph,Lake Forest University

Gerald Horne, University of Houston

Nikki M. Taylor, Howard University

Terrion L. Williamson, University of Minnesota

African Americans in the 19th Century Midwest

The 200-Pound Servant in the Room: Creating a First White Man Founder and Erasing a Black Man in Bondage in Early Wisconsin

Jennifer Stinson, Saginaw Valley State University

The Strange Case of Peter Betters: The 1887 Black Intraracial Lynching of Jamestown, Ohio

Matthew Peek, State Archives of North Carolina

Holy Cause or Odious Doctrine? Wisconsin, Democracy, and Black Suffrage, 1846-1866

Frank Kalisik, UW-Milwaukee

How to Read a Cookbook: Deciphering the Life of Malinda Russell

Dani Willcutt, Michigan State University

African Americans in the Twentieth Century Midwest

Moderator: Karis Blaker, University of Michigan

Scottsboro North: Black Women and the Struggle for Racial Justice in Depression-Era Cleveland

Melissa Ford, Slippery Rock University

Claiming Sojourner Truth: The Construction and Reconstruction of a Buried Hero in Battle Creek, Michigan

Karis Blaker, University of Michigan

Treatment of Blacks in Baseball in Iowa (1901 to 1903)

Paul Spyhalski, Independent Scholar

Before Juneteenth: Kalamazoo, Michigan in Emancipatory Tradition

Michelle Johnson, Independent Scholar

Anti-Slavery and President Politics in Antebellum Illinois

Moderator: David Gellman, DePauw University

Western Citizen: At the Confluence of Liberty and Bondage in Antebellum Illinois

Jeanne Gillespie McDonald, Waubonsee Community College

Elijah Lovejoy, Antislavery, and Nationalism

Graham Peck, University of Illinois at Springfield

“The False and Arrogant Claim of the Van Buren Party:” The Presidential Election of 1836 in Illinois

Jason Duncan, Aquinas College