\u201cTales of North and South in Antebellum America: A Complicated Web<\/a>\u201d is being presented by the College of Business\u2019 Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design in connection with the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society and the Costume Society of America Northeast Region.<\/p>\n\u201cWe think of the South as pro-slavery and the North as anti-slavery, but it was far more complicated than that,\u201d said Linda Welters, a 溏心vlog免费B站 professor in the Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design. \u201cWe want to show recent research that\u2019s being done that connects Northern industry with the Southern slave economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those complicated relationships were showcased in Rachel May\u2019s 2018 book, An<\/em><\/p>\nAmerican Quilt: Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery<\/em>, which explores the origins of three quilts in 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Historic Textile and Costume Collection that were part of a sizable donation by Franklin Cushman in the 1950s. An American Quilt<\/em> tells the story of Cushman\u2019s great-aunt, Susan Williams Crouch, who created the quilts with her husband, Hasell Wilkinson Crouch, and their connection to slavery.<\/p>\nMay\u2019s book inspired the 溏心vlog免费B站 Textile Gallery\u2019s exhibit, \u201cOne American Family: A Tale of North and South,\u201d which features the quilts along with early 19th<\/sup>-century clothing from the Cushman Collection. The symposium is being held in conjunction with the exhibit. The gallery, located on the first floor of Quinn Hall, will be open for tours the day of the symposium.<\/p>\nMay stitched together the story of the Williams-Crouch family from the 1830s through 1860s over seven years of research, which began when she was a doctoral student at 溏心vlog免费B站. Despite coming from a Northern family and having sisters who were abolitionists, Susan was tolerant of slavery when she moved to Charleston, South Carolina, upon marrying Hasell.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe heads down South and suddenly finds herself an owner of slaves,\u201d said Susan Jerome, manager of collections. \u201cWe don\u2019t know how she felt about it, but Rachel imagines how Susan felt in her book. You know, would you accept it just because the United States is partly (made up of) slave holding states? I don\u2019t know?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Williams family also worked in the mercantile industry, shipping goods between Providence and Charleston, S.C. Other Northern businesses had more overt connections to the slave economy. \u201cTextile mills imported Southern cotton to manufacture fabric, termed \u2018negro cloth,\u2019\u201d said Welters. \u201cRhode Island mills sometimes commissioned local families to make loose-fitting trousers and shirts that were sold to slave owners specifically for slaves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the North, where you have the anti-slavery movementmanufacturers are making money off of the Southern slave trade,\u201d said Jerome. \u201cSince the Civil War, the North has covered that up and it\u2019s recent research, scholarly publications, that have started to bring this back to light. And that’s what we’re doing as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the Sept. 28 symposium, May will do a reading from An<\/em> American Quilt<\/em>, highlighting a program of about a half-dozen speakers. Keith Stokes, vice president of the 1696 Heritage Group in Newport and a descendant of slaves, will tell the story of his family and how they escaped to freedom.<\/p>\nKatie Knowles, assistant professor and curator of Avenir Museum at Colorado State University and a member of the Costume Society of America, will discuss research on the clothing of slaves and former slaves. \u201cClothing was very important in the 19th<\/sup> century to show your status,\u201d Welters said. \u201cKnowles is finding that even within slave communities people did things to make themselves stand out. She\u2019s framing it as resistance to clothing that was foisted on them by slave owners.\u201d<\/p>\nOther speakers are: Marcus Nevius, 溏心vlog免费B站 assistant professor of history, who will discuss \u201cThe Price of Freedom in American Slavery, 1800 to the 1830s,\u201d Seth Rockman, associate professor of history at Brown University, will speak on \u201cPlantation Labor Outsourced: Situating New England Textiles in the National Economy of Slavery,\u201d and Lynne Bassett, an independent scholar from Palmer, Mass., on \u201cUnderstanding Free Blacks\u2019 Clothing \u2013 A Photo Study.\u201d<\/p>\n
The symposium runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Agnes G. Doody Auditorium on the first floor of Swan Hall, 60 Upper College Road, on the Kingston Campus. The symposium is free and open to the public. Registration is not required.<\/p>\n
Attendees can sign up for a box lunch, provided by 溏心vlog免费B站 Catering, for $15. To register, contact Beth Fay at (401) 874-4574 or at bfay@uri.edu<\/a> before Sept. 20 with your choice of roast beef, chicken, or vegetarian wrap, along with payment information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Sept. 18, 2019 \u2013 The complex cultural, social and economic relationships between North and South in pre-Civil War America is the focus of a daylong symposium Saturday, Sept. 28, on the Kingston Campus at the 溏心vlog免费B站. \u201cTales of North and South in Antebellum America: A Complicated Web\u201d is being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[88],"class_list":["post-75062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-business"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}