Things to do, places to eat, shows to see, places to stay in Madison County, NY      

The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum announces plans for the third induction ceremony  for the Hall of Fame. Lewis Tappan and Theodore Dwight Weld will be inducted at 8 p.m. Saturday, October 24, 2009, in Golden Auditorium at Colgate University during a free dramatic evening program created and directed by Hugh C. Humphreys. The Hall of Fame portraits of Tappan and Weld created by artist Joseph Flores, Rochester NY, will also be unveiled. The programs are created for the public to learn of the war against slavery.

At 2:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon during the Abolition Symposia, Fergus M. Bordewich will present Lewis Tappan: Radical and Evangelical – How Religion Inspired the War against Slavery. Bordewich’s presentation will honor New York City businessman Lewis Tappan by highlighting his central role in the development of the abolition movement for the immediate abolition of slavery, and showing more broadly, how Tappan’s fervent evangelical Christianity infused the early antislavery activities. 

Tappan’s role in the 1839 Amistad incident is presented in the Steven Spielberg award winning movie Amistad which will be shown at the Hamilton Theatre, 7 Lebanon Street, Hamilton at 5:00 p.m. Friday, October 23, 2009. A free panel discussion directly across the street at the Colgate Bookstore follows the film. The panel includes Bookstore staff, NAHOF members, and a John Quincy Adams reenactor.

Following the Tappan program, Carol Faulkner, Ph.D., presents Theodore Dwight Weld: Romantic Love and the Anti-Slavery Movement at 3:30. Dr. Faulkner’s presentation will focus on Weld’s career as an abolitionist from his participation in the anti-slavery rebellion at Lyman Beecher’s Lane Seminary to his publication of American Slavery As It Is. For many abolitionists their personal lives were deeply connected to their public commitment to end slavery. Weld was no exception. His courtship with Angelina Grimke involved professions of love as well as debates over anti-slavery principles and practice.

Weld’s principle role in the American Anti-Slavery Society will be included in the first program of the symposia at 1:00 p.m. Owen W. Muelder presents The Establishment of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Its Most Influential Agent, Theodore Weld, and the Significant Impact of his “Seventy.”  Weld recruited agents known as “The Seventy” who traveled and spoke in assigned districts representing the American Anti-Slavery Society.
The afternoon symposia close with a presentation in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday year. Paul Finkelman, Ph.D. presents the legal, political, and military constraints that explain the Emancipation Proclamation and why, in the end, Lincoln was the Great Emancipator. Dr. Finkelman is the William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy and Senior Fellow in the Government Law Center at SUNY Albany.  A specialist in American legal history, race and the law, Paul Finkelman is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles and more than twenty books. He is specialist in areas such as the law of slavery, constitutional law, and legal issues surrounding baseball. His work on legal history and constitutional law has been cited by numerous courts and in many appellate briefs. Dr. Finkelman was aFellow in Law and Humanities at Harvard Law School 1982-83. He received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago in 1976, his M.A. from Chicago in 1972 and his B.A. from Syracuse University in 1971.

 

Further tribute to Lincoln includes the exhibition of a replica of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The sixteenth president also appears at the annual dinner and in the evening program thanks to reenactor Jack Baylis.

 

After the symposia Frederick Morsell presents the keynote Frederick Douglass on Race: A Soul’s Evolutionat 5:30 p.m. for the annual dinner in the Hall of Presidents at Colgate. The Hall of Fame event begins Thursday, October 22 at the Colgate campus with the Upstate New York debut of Over the River…Lydia Maria Child, Abolitionist for Freedom, a film about the life, times, and legacy of the famous writer and abolitionist followed by a panel discussion on How Lydia Maria Child is Part of our Work: Our Relationship with Child. The next day on Friday, October 23 at 1:30 p.m. Constance L. Jackson, the writer, director, and producer of the Child film, will conduct a workshop “Becoming Agents of Change: Then and Now.”

 

On Sunday, NAHOF will hold an Open House at its site at the Smithfield Community Center in Peterboro followed by a tour of the Gerrit Smith Estate by Smith biographer Norman K. Dann PH.D.

 

In recognition of the 150th anniversary of John Brown raid’s on Harpers Ferry October 16, 1859, folk artists Greg Artzner and Terry Leonino present Sword of the Spirit, a concert Sunday, October 25 at 1:00 about Brown, his wife Mary, their family, and their abolitionist colleagues at “The Ferry.”

 

The conference closes with the second session of a Public Abolition Lyceum on American Abolition from the Colonial Period to the Civil War. At 3:00 Milton C. Sernett, Ph.D. professor emeritus Syracuse University, presents Freedom Now! Garrisonian Immediatism and Abolition Ends and Means.

 

Details of the public event registration are available at www.abolitionhof    mail@abolitionhof.org, and  315 684-3262.