skozelabolition

This has been a horrific 19 months since Covid-19 invaded the spaces of my family, my students before retirement, friends, and all the people I don’t know. I hope everyone is safe and healthy, and I continue to send you many warm wishes.

Since retirement, I have been busy, working on three grant-funded projects: 1. Continuing the presentations on the murder of enslaved NJ woman named “Wench Betty” in court records as supported by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities (NJCH); 2. Researching early African American history in Woodbury, part of Gloucester County, NJ for the Woodbury Public Library, supported by NJCH, and exciting new research on New Jersey slave owners who brought their slaves to the western territories (not necessarily freeing the ensalved), including Ohio after state formation, partially supported by the New Jersey Historical Commission.

My husband and I ventured out to travel together this summer, first when I moved to Virginia in August for a residential Fellowship at the International Center for Jefferson Studies, a part of Monticello. Thank you Peter Onuf and Jonathan Mercantini for recommending me. The experience was overwhelming, as I wrote in my seven-page report. The vast number of resources, I believe over 50,000 books in the Jefferson Library, the Special Collections resources, and very talented staff at ICJS, Monticello Public School Programs, Monticello, the Oral History Project staff with Getting Word, and all the people I met who helped me. Additionally, I visited Poplar Forest and met with their great staff to discuss TJ’s plantation operations and select overseers. My interest continues to be why Quakers who were abolitionists would work for Thomas Jefferson and his slave plantation. There were other Quakers and family of disowned Quakers that Jefferson “collected” as part of his “free” employees. My August 24, 2021 Virtual Fellows Talk raised uncomfortable issues, and I welcome your viewing and sharing your thoughts. Wish me luck in that I am trying to persuade Monticello to sponsor a symposium on Jefferson’s complicated relationship with a range of Quakers. If you would like to watch the ICJS talk, please go the page below, and at the end of the page click the link. https://www.monticello.org/research-education/for-scholars/international-center-for-jefferson-studies/talks-lectures-symposia-conferences/some-of-thomas-jefferson-s-complicated-friends-quakers-working-for-jefferson-on-his-slave-plantations-or-providing-outside-goods/

Visiting in Richmond was quite unexpected, but I am following the paper trail of the family related to disowned Quakers Bowling and Micajah Clark to better understand Quaker reactions to enslavement in the late 1700s in Virginia and North Carolina. Thank you to the great staff at the Virginia Historical Library at the Virginia Museum of History and Life.

Visiting Colonial Williamsburg, followed by Historical Deerfield (Mass.), and the Green Mountains of Vermont just lit my soul on fire with beautiful fall color, smell of maple syrup, historical site preservation and restoration, and the power of nature.

As we enter November, let me wish you all health and happiness for the winter season.

Peace.

 

 

If everything is in a name, how can history help us reconstruct names and ideas when the history does not exist.  One of the most profound texts I read as a graduate student was Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms. Through his creative mind, his landmark microhistory of northern Italian and Baltic communities the world was introduced to peasant constructs about the Catholic religion, the power of ideas, and the role of the Inquisition in stifling important ideas.

Maybe Carlo’s approach is that of challenging everything, especially when reading between existing sources or using, in his case, the oppressor’s notes to reconstruct the life of a man persecuted for his unique interpretation of Roman Catholic values.

Sue Kozel

 

From reading recent posts in the AHA forum, it seems that history is taking a back-seat in certain department reorganizations at 4 year and some 2 year higher education institutions?  History has become, in some places, a threatened discipline. A history class can provide a wonderful forum to test the values of evaluative thinking and help students engage in questioning their societies and civilizations.  It is a discussion that can lead to self-discovery.  We can look at today’s roots and sometimes discover together the historical moment the issue emerged.  Slavery still exists in the world, as does oppression, violence including rape, discrimination, and at the same time hope.  Maybe history can help us figure out where some humans keep going wrong while others move toward hopefully elevating the world and striving for hope.  Last year, we learned that some high schools in American were teaching that African slaves were “workers” and not slaves.  How can we sanitize history in this way?

Maybe an ethics course looking at the historical roots of ideas is worth considering.   Some of my best classes focus on these questions, “What is truth?” “Is the truth good or bad in nature?” or “Do rights matter?” We even look at “Who is Human” in history and do “Human Rights” change over time.  Just a thought,

Sue K.