Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman: From Slavery to Freedom – An Online Talk with Dr. Frances Jones-Sneed

Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman: From Slavery to Freedom

An Online Talk with Dr. Frances Jones-Sneed
Professor Emerita, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

Thursday, January 27, 7 pm

Online via Zoom | Free and Open to All
Click here to RSVP and receive Zoom link.

Berkshire County has been home to many prominent African Americans, including W.E.B. DuBois, James Van Der Zee, and Elizabeth Freeman, the first enslaved African American woman to successfully file a lawsuit for freedom in the state of Massachusetts. Her 1780 case set a precedent that led to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts a few years later. MCLA Professor Emerita Frances Jones-Sneed will tell Freeman’s story, its implications, and current efforts to share it widely, from a planned motion picture to a commemorative statue in Sheffield, joining one on view at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington DC.

Dr. Frances Jones-Sneed is professor emerita of history and former Director of Women Studies at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Jones-Sneed has taught and researched local history, with a focus on African-Americans, for over twenty-five years. She spearheaded a national conference on African American biography in September 2006, is co-director of the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Heritage Trail, a former board member of Mass Humanities, and is presently a board member of the Samuel Harrison Society and Clinton Church Restoration. She was a 2008 NEH Summer Fellow at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University and co-edited the book African American Heritage in the Upper Housatonic Valley.

This online talk is free and open to all, but pre-registration is required. Click here to register safely and securely online.