It still seems a little miraculous that through the archives, and thanks to online genealogical platforms like ancestry.com, it has been possible to connect with and converse with Brooks descendants, sharing stories of places that we are all connected to, through histories that cut across poles of race, oppression, and struggle in our shared national history. It has been deeply fascinating, and at times startling, to re-encounter a landscape suffused with my own childhood memories and to realize the profound histories of injustice and struggle that are embedded within these grounds. 1662 A Virginia law passed in 1662 stated that the status of the mother determined if "The Florida Modern Slavery museum is an invaluable enterprise for educating the citizens of Florida and the nation on the continuing absence of economic justice for low income workers, especially agricultural workers.

of the human race. Please support the CIW museum and stop supporting companies that buy produce picked by slaves. The naval part of war history plays a role here too, both, One lesser known aspect is covered too: namely the fate of the sailors of the merchant navy who became. An impressive line-up of ten leading human rights and anti-slavery organizations have signed-on as endorsers of the soon-to-be-launched Modern-Day Slavery Museum. Author of many works on slavery and its aftermath in the US, including The 1908 will, in turn, of Mary Nourse, an unmarried daughter of Charles Josephus Nourse, who lived for many decades at The Highlands, leaves bequests for many of the family’s African American servants (some of them previously enslaved). Professor of History, College of William & Mary

It is estimated that somewhere between 10 and 20 million Africans were thus uprooted and transplanted to the “New World”.

1816 April 9 The African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first all-black religious denomination The 54th was the first all-black regiment recruited in the North for the Courtesy of his daughter, Aimee Hendle. This struck me as important not only for the Cathedral, but also for Sidwell Friends, a historically Quaker institution dedicated to principles of social justice. Carolina. ", Dr. Patrick Mason Some family members worshipped, parish records reveal, at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, D.C. built in the 1850s, which continues to stand adjacent to the National Cathedral. In re-visiting common ground, we re-encounter the Self in the Other, the “I” in the “Thou,” as we work, gradually but surely, towards building the beloved community for ourselves and our posterity. Dr. el-Hakim has been called the  "Schomburg of the Hip-Hop generation" because of his passionate commitment to carry on the rich tradition of the Black Museum Movement. As I was tracing Frank Brooks’ life, I luckily encountered genealogical research posted on ancestry.com by his great grand-daughter, Mrs. Bettye Howe Saunders. In 1873, William and Sarah Brooks’ son William Henry Brooks (b, 1851) was married at Holy Trinity to Laura Dover, the young woman who lived next door to the Brooks family at what is now 39th and Warren Streets. 1688 February 18 Pennsylvania Quakers adopted the first formal anti-slavery resolution in American Founded by Dr. Khalid el-Hakim, the Black History 101 Mobile Museum is an award winning collection of over 7,000 original artifacts of Black memorabilia dating from the trans-Atlantic slave trade era to hip-hop culture.

It's more like an anthropological exhibition about various aspects of. Harvest of Hope festival, Tallahassee of slavery to the South's economy. It seemed to me urgently important to learn the names of these enslaved people and to uncover their stories. St. Columbkille Parish, Sanibel Island

The museum claims to be the only institution of its kind – and that is true in the sense of a modern museum with as wide a coverage as this one. With the usage of our services you permit us to use cookies. Though there is no open slave trade any more, illegal forced labour, human trafficking, child labour and extreme forms of exploitation of workers and domestic servants (including complete deprivation of freedom and no pay) continue to this day. This exhibition began as a partnership between Monticello and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, D.C. As many as 185,000 black soldiers fought on the side of the Union. The Cathedral too, has had a proud Civil Rights history since the 1960s, and its leadership is committed to commemorating persons of color associated with its beautiful landscape, which overlooks the capital city from one of its highest promontories, Mount St. Albans. At the end of the discussion, I was asked if I might be able to trace the descendants of the enslaved families, who labored on these lands.

Indeed, for too long, there has been insufficient light shining in on the low pay and indecent working conditions of agricultural workers in this state. Naples Daily News I Naples Daily News II Florida Times-Union

Using material from the Getting Word Oral History Project, the exhibition follows the families through Emancipation into the present. Frank and Mary Brooks’ youngest child, Bessie Brooks, (1904-1940) moved from Washington D.C. to Rhode Island, as a young mother in the late 1920s. 1854 The Kansas-Nebraska Act mandated that a popular vote of the settlers would determine Associate Professor of History, Florida International University. Another aspect of maritime heritage that I had previously been totally unaware of was covered in an extra section called “Hello Sailor” – about gay life within the merchant navy and on passenger ships. Then take your children and friends and family. ", Dr. Jacqueline Jones

We can tell from the petition that there was some confusion in the family about who was free and who was enslaved; Sarah initially signed as a co-owner of their children, but then her name was crossed out, and she was written in as one of the “property” for whom William was being compensated! Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Clearwater, Miami The exhibits were developed in consultation with workers who have escaped from forced labor operations as well as, "Modern slavery in spotlight: Immokalee coalition debuts mobile museum,", "Modern-day slavery museum reveals cruelty in Florida's fields,", "Farmworker slavery exhibit shocks many during stops in Naples,", "Grown in Florida: Oranges and modern slavery,", "Florida's modern slavery museum spotlights plight of farm laborers,", "Mobile museum outlines Florida farmworkers' poverty,", "Exhibit shines light on farmworker conditions,", "Modern slavery exhibit at University of Tampa,", "Modern slavery museum rolls into Naples,", Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, Florida State University Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. In seeking out the stories our shared land has to tell us, we are reminded of that eternal truth. had met under the pretense of holding religious meetings. Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the United States Supreme Court ruled that blacks were • The former Highlands (the modern Sidwell Friends campus), where William and Sarah Brooks lived in slavery and freedom;

There is much we can learn from this endeavor and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the enlightening organization responsible for this educational tour. co-author, "The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today", "Today, as in the past, many Florida field workers lack the basic civil rights, and human rights, that would guarantee them fair treatment and fair compensation for their strenuous labors. This is a list of museums in the United States whose primary focus is on African American culture and history. As it happens, I undertook historical research a decade ago at Tudor Place, the family seat of the slave owning Peters’ family, who were close kin of Martha Custis Washington and Robert E. Lee. I am still trying to think through what it means, that in a distant way, the places of my own coming of age are so closely bound up with the Brooks family story, from slavery times through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and beyond. Though the restrictions on slaves. 1712 April A slave revolt in New York City, during which nine white men died, led to increased

We go traveling together, in effect, tracing the arc of human history that famously “bends towards justice.”. Through archival inquiry, I quickly learned that a group of linked enslaved persons had in fact been held on the grounds that later became the Cathedral, and also the land that became Sidwell Friends School, where I had attended high school, located a half mile from the Cathedral. The Mobile Modern-day Slavery Museum is here to open our eyes to the age-old battle between freedom and darkness that is as alive today as in the distant past. 1850 The Compromise of 1850 brought California into the United States as a free state,

Later, the other main colonizing world powers. Associate Chair and Associate Professor of Ethnic and Chicana/o--Latina/o Studies They were classified as indentured

Albans,” with the Native American curator, Gabi Tayac, descended from the indigenous communities that lived for millennia on the lands that later became the District of Columbia; my longtime colleague, the African American curator of history, Fath Davis Ruffins, herself a graduate of National Cathedral School, the all-female academy on the grounds of the National Cathedral; and the Rev. It is so much more than learning, it is our chance to be part of ending slavery. Photo Galleries. The Travelling Slavery Exhibits were created as a wedge-shape, with two sides of the interactive museum exhibits providing printed text and image information on the context, historical and current information about slavery in the Western Cape and around the world. former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Virginia gave the white servants additional years to serve while John Punch, a black The black Africans were then sold in the European colonies in the Americas, in particular in Brazil, the Caribbean and south and eastern parts of North America, where they were forced to work in the plantations. It is an ugly problem and we cannot solve problems we do not understand. 1816 December 28 The American Colonization Society was founded to transport freeborn blacks and emancipated After opening in Washington D.C., the exhibition embarked on a successful four-venue tour between 2012 and 2015. We wish you success in ending company practices that undermine human rights and dignity. As I began to research the history of these windows, I learned that they had been dedicated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the 1950s, in the context of postwar massive white resistance to integration.

Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC), National Economic and Social Rights Initiative. CIW is one of the leading grassroots antislavery organizations working today to expose the conditions of peonage in Florida agriculture.

• The playground of Lafayette Elementary School, the site of the home of Frank Brooks, born 1873, among the first in his family line born in freedom. Four hundred years of slavery in Florida, and 145 of those coming after the Civil War, are the result of the continued violation and debasement of workers’ human rights. In his February 2020 letter, MSU Museum Director Mark Auslander shares reflections on landscape and memory, emerging out of his historical research on enslaved and free families of color in Washington, D.C. before the Civil War. Their new traveling museum helps all of us learn what we need to know in order to bring this crime to an end. Romeo Howe (3rd great grandson of William and Sarah Brooks), during his Vietnam War service. The name for this was “The Middle Passage”.