Saturday, September 17, 2-4PM

Lyceum at The Meeting House at the Old Manse / The Trustees of Reservations (TTOR)
In partnership with Concord Museum and The Robbins House

This program focuses on two exemplary late 18^th-early 19^th century Black Concordians, Thomas Dugan, successful yeoman farmer, and Ellen Garrison, educator and activist. How do we know what we know about them? What do their lives tell us about the Concord of their day? And how do their narratives connect to present-day social justice issues?

Presenters: David Wood, Curator, Concord Museum; Maria Madison, President, Board of Directors of The Robbins House; Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at Penn State Altoona

Registration: http://www.thetrustees.org/things-to-do/greater-boston/event-29038.html.

And, to learn more about The Trustees Art and the Landscape initiative: www.thetrustees.org/art

The Old Manse is a National Historic Landmark built in 1770 and former home and gathering place for politicians, deep thinkers, and transcendentalists including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is also the house in which enslaved African American women and men lived and worked for the Emerson-Ripley family at the time of the American Revolution. Artist Sam Durant, known for his multimedia works that take a critical view on our social, political, and cultural tropes, has created The Meeting House, a structure in the field near Old Manse that references the houses built by Concord’s first freedmen and serves as a place to discuss issues such as slavery and segregation and their continuing impact on today’s society.

The Robbins House currently features a new exhibit about Ellen Garrison, granddaughter of a previously enslaved Revolutionary War veteran, daughter of a ‘fugitive slave,’ and a Concord-born and raised 19th century civil rights firebrand. As a 43-year-old African American woman in the South, Ellen Garrison tested the nation’s first Civil Rights Bill of 1866 by purposely integrating a Maryland train depot waiting room. Maria Madison of The Robbins House will discuss Garrison’s life story through the lens of civil rights in the United States.

In 2015, the Concord Museum created an exhibition that visualized the belongings of Thomas Dugan, an African American farmer whose standing contrasted with many of his Concord contemporaries, black or white. Through the installation, a fuller picture of Dugan’s life, his family’s work, and their relationship to the town of Concord emerged. Curator David Wood will discuss how the act of installing objects made visible what we know now – and what we may never know – about the life of a man who, like Ellen Garrison, was both ordinary and extraordinary.

Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, author of To Set This World Right: The Antislavery Movement in Thoreau’s Concord, will provide historical perspective on Thomas Dugan, Ellen Garrison, and the many residents of Concord who fought for civil rights throughout the centuries.