Land/Mark Symposium on Saturday, June 13th at Cambridge Public Library Lecture Hall
Charan
Land/Mark: A Symposium on Enslavement, Resistance and the Revolution
Saturday, June 13th, 11am - 3pm
Cambridge Public Library Lecture Hall
449 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138
Free and open to the public. For tickets please visit: https://cambridgepl.libcal.com/event/16793265
Event Description:
As ongoing celebrations mark the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, conversations often focus on historic battles and soldiers who served in the fight for independence. We tend to value documents such as the Declaration of Independence while minimizing the freedom petitions of enslaved people that exposed a fraught union. If we place the American Revolution against the backdrop of Black freedom movements of the era, how might we tell a different story of our nation?
This symposium explores the story of Mark, Phillis and Phebe, three enslaved people who were convicted and punished in Cambridge in 1755 for fatally poisoning their enslaver, John Codman. The case caused such an uproar that Phebe was forced out of Boston while Mark and Phillis were publicly executed to dissuade other enslaved people from using violence to secure their freedom. More than 40 years after Mark’s death, when Paul Revere wrote about his famous 1775 ride to warn about advancing British forces, he noted that he passed two British officers “nearly opposite where Mark was hung in chains.”
Today, historians, artists, and community members have returned again to the case of Mark, Phillis, and Phebe to explore slavery and Black resistance and to think through the possibility of historical repair. As we commemorate the Revolution, how are we to understand the history and resistance of Mark, Phillis and Phebe, not as an isolated case but as part of larger Black freedom struggles happening in Boston and beyond? In this symposium, we will examine their lives, the punishments meted out to them, and the Black social, political, legal and familial context of the era. How do their stories inform our understanding of liberty and resistance in the time before, during and after the Revolution? And how should we remember Mark, Phillis and Phebe today?
The symposium will include two panel discussions and a keynote address by Kellie Carter Jackson, PhD, author of We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance. Panelists include artists Ifé Franklin, Dell M. Hamilton and Angela M. Counts along with scholars and public historians Aabid Allibhai, Jaimie Crumley, Dan Breen, Kendra Field, and Kyera Singleton.
This program is made possible by a grant from Mass Humanities, which provided funding through the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC). Complimentary refreshments will be provided. It is presented by the Royall House & Slave Quarters and the Somerville Museum in partnership with History Cambridge, Cambridge Public Library, Cambridge Black History Project, Old North Illuminated and the Somerville Department of Racial and Social Justice. To register, please visit: https://cambridgepl.libcal.com/event/16793265
For more information about the history, History Cambridge's Beth Folsom wrote a piece in this week's Cambridge | Somerville Independent, "Land/Mark Symposium examines an 18th century murder case with Cambridge ties"
