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Akeia de Barros Gomes
Director of the Center for Black History at the Newport Historical Society
Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes is the Director of the Center for Black History at the Newport Historical Society and is a Visiting Scholar and Adjunct Lecturer at Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Akeia leads the development and implementation of the Center for Black History at the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House, which will open as an exhibition space, educational and community programming space and a space for scholarship in 2026. She was lead curator for the 2024 Mystic Seaport Museum exhibition, Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty and the Sea a multi-year Mellon Foundation-funded project that recovers the history of the founding and development of the Dawnland (New England) through Dawnland Indigenous, African, and African-descended maritime narratives. Akeia taught as professor of American Studies and Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Wheelock College from 2008 to 2017. She received her BA in anthropology/archaeology at Salve Regina University and her MA and PhD in anthropology/archaeology at the University of Connecticut.
Manisha Sinha
Draper Chair in American History, University of Connecticut
Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and the President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft prize. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellowship in 2022. She taught at the University of Massachusetts for over twenty years where she was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal, the highest honor bestowed on faculty. She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina which was named one of the ten best books on slavery in Politico and featured in The New York Times 1619 Project. Her book The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition, which won the Frederick Douglass, the Organization of American Historians’ Avery Craven, the Southern Historical Association’s biannual James Rawley, and SHEAR Best Book prizes, was also long listed for the National Book Award for Non-Fiction. It was widely reviewed and named editor’s choice in The New York Times Book Review and the book of the week by Times Higher Education to coincide with its UK publication. She is the author and editor of several other books and articles. Her latest book, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 was published this year by Liveright (Norton) and reviewed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, and The New Republic among other outlets. A historian of the long nineteenth century, her research interests lie in the transnational histories of slavery, abolition, and feminism and the history and legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Professor Sinha has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Daily News, Time Magazine, CNN, The Boston Globe, Dissent, The Nation, Jacobin, and The Huffington Post and has been interviewed by the national and international press.
Matthew Warshauer
Professor of History, Central Connecticut State University
Matt Warshauer is a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, where he received his bachelors in American Studies. Fascinated by what he calls “the American paradox,” the ever-challenging conundrum between the nation’s founding document and the difficulties of pursuing essential ideas of freedom, Warshauer pursued an MA and Ph.D. at Saint Louis University. He has spent the last 30 years exploring the great American experiment in self-government. The author of five books and countless articles and reviews, Warshauer has written extensively on Andrew Jackson, slavery and the Civil War, and, most recently, 9/11 and how the most important and devastating event of the 21st century has impacted the world in which we live. Creating and Failing the 9/11 Generation: The Real Story of September 11 was just released from Routledge Press. With a unique ability to draw in his audience, Warshauer guides listeners through the complexities of American political and constitutional history so that we can all think more clearly and gain a better of understanding of our role as citizens.
Alexis H. Smith
Executive Director, New Haven Legal Assistance Association, Inc.
Alexis is currently NHLAA’s executive director. She previously served as the organization’s Deputy Director, and before that was a staff attorney at Greater Hartford Legal Aid where she represented children facing denial of their educational rights. In addition to leading NHLAA, Alexis has served in numerous leadership roles for the Connecticut Bar Association (CBA), including as Secretary of the CBA, a member of the CBA’s House of Delegates, co-chair of the CBA Task Force on Policing, a member of the CBA Awards Committee, and the Pandemic Recovery and the Future of Court Technology Task Force. She has also served as president of the George W. Crawford Black Bar Association and has earned awards from The West Haven Black Coalition, Junior Achievement, New Haven Probate Court, and Gateway Community College Foundation. Committed to community service, she currently serves on a number of local non-profit boards. Born and raised in Connecticut, she earned her Bachelor’s Degree from Duke University and law degree from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
If the seminar is recorded, all member registrants will receive complimentary access to the recording approximately six weeks after the program.
Closed captioning will be available during the seminar presentation for virtual attendees.
Motley Speaker Series| Past, Present and Future Impact of the History of Slavery in CT: Part 1-Past - EMS250312 package
Cost
FreeCLE Credit
CT: 2.0 CLE Credits (Ethics)Webinar Date:
Wednesday, March 12, 2025This segment of the Constance Baker Motley Series on Racial Inequality is presented by the Connecticut Bar Association (CBA) and its Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Committee, in collaboration and co-sponsorship with the Connecticut Bar Foundation (CBF) and James W. Cooper Fellows.
Credit
Ethics and Professionalism:2.0
Description
About the Program
During this multi-part series, attendees will explore the history of slavery in Connecticut through a legal lens. During this first part of the series, attendees will discuss the history of slavery and its legality in the northern/New England states in the antebellum period, the early abolition movement, the economic impact of slavery during this time, and Connecticut’s gradual emancipation law, which resulted in slavery continuing in Connecticut as late as 1848, when there were only a handful of persons enslaved in the state. Later events in the multi-part series will examine the ways that the present legal sphere was shaped by CT’s history of slavery and explore current and future initiatives engaging with that history.
You Will Learn
- How we take stories of the systems of slavery and abolition and breathe life into the stories of the enslaved themselves
- How, with limited documentation, we can focus our narratives on the agency and resistance that enslaved individuals employed in their identity, personhood, and freedom-making to add to the history of slavery, freedom, and unfreedoms in Connecticut
- About what some of the considerations were for Connecticut passing a gradual emancipation law in 1784, which did not fully abolish slavery until 1848 and whether, coming immediately upon the heels of the Revolution, was the act generated by a notion of liberty, or were there other considerations?
- About what the 1865 failed referendum on black voting tells us about Connecticut’s overall relationship to slavery, abolition, and race
Speakers
Akeia de Barros GomesDirector of the Center for Black History at the Newport Historical Society
Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes is the Director of the Center for Black History at the Newport Historical Society and is a Visiting Scholar and Adjunct Lecturer at Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Akeia leads the development and implementation of the Center for Black History at the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House, which will open as an exhibition space, educational and community programming space and a space for scholarship in 2026. She was lead curator for the 2024 Mystic Seaport Museum exhibition, Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty and the Sea a multi-year Mellon Foundation-funded project that recovers the history of the founding and development of the Dawnland (New England) through Dawnland Indigenous, African, and African-descended maritime narratives. Akeia taught as professor of American Studies and Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Wheelock College from 2008 to 2017. She received her BA in anthropology/archaeology at Salve Regina University and her MA and PhD in anthropology/archaeology at the University of Connecticut.
Manisha SinhaDraper Chair in American History, University of Connecticut
Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and the President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft prize. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellowship in 2022. She taught at the University of Massachusetts for over twenty years where she was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal, the highest honor bestowed on faculty. She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina which was named one of the ten best books on slavery in Politico and featured in The New York Times 1619 Project. Her book The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition, which won the Frederick Douglass, the Organization of American Historians’ Avery Craven, the Southern Historical Association’s biannual James Rawley, and SHEAR Best Book prizes, was also long listed for the National Book Award for Non-Fiction. It was widely reviewed and named editor’s choice in The New York Times Book Review and the book of the week by Times Higher Education to coincide with its UK publication. She is the author and editor of several other books and articles. Her latest book, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 was published this year by Liveright (Norton) and reviewed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, and The New Republic among other outlets. A historian of the long nineteenth century, her research interests lie in the transnational histories of slavery, abolition, and feminism and the history and legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Professor Sinha has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Daily News, Time Magazine, CNN, The Boston Globe, Dissent, The Nation, Jacobin, and The Huffington Post and has been interviewed by the national and international press.
Matthew WarshauerProfessor of History, Central Connecticut State University
Matt Warshauer is a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, where he received his bachelors in American Studies. Fascinated by what he calls “the American paradox,” the ever-challenging conundrum between the nation’s founding document and the difficulties of pursuing essential ideas of freedom, Warshauer pursued an MA and Ph.D. at Saint Louis University. He has spent the last 30 years exploring the great American experiment in self-government. The author of five books and countless articles and reviews, Warshauer has written extensively on Andrew Jackson, slavery and the Civil War, and, most recently, 9/11 and how the most important and devastating event of the 21st century has impacted the world in which we live. Creating and Failing the 9/11 Generation: The Real Story of September 11 was just released from Routledge Press. With a unique ability to draw in his audience, Warshauer guides listeners through the complexities of American political and constitutional history so that we can all think more clearly and gain a better of understanding of our role as citizens.
Moderator
Alexis H. SmithExecutive Director, New Haven Legal Assistance Association, Inc.
Alexis is currently NHLAA’s executive director. She previously served as the organization’s Deputy Director, and before that was a staff attorney at Greater Hartford Legal Aid where she represented children facing denial of their educational rights. In addition to leading NHLAA, Alexis has served in numerous leadership roles for the Connecticut Bar Association (CBA), including as Secretary of the CBA, a member of the CBA’s House of Delegates, co-chair of the CBA Task Force on Policing, a member of the CBA Awards Committee, and the Pandemic Recovery and the Future of Court Technology Task Force. She has also served as president of the George W. Crawford Black Bar Association and has earned awards from The West Haven Black Coalition, Junior Achievement, New Haven Probate Court, and Gateway Community College Foundation. Committed to community service, she currently serves on a number of local non-profit boards. Born and raised in Connecticut, she earned her Bachelor’s Degree from Duke University and law degree from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
If the seminar is recorded, all member registrants will receive complimentary access to the recording approximately six weeks after the program.
Closed captioning will be available during the seminar presentation for virtual attendees.