Slavery North

Behind the scenes of our Fellow Spotlight videos 🎥✨

Two incredible shoot days with our Slavery North Initiative Research Fellows, capturing the brilliance, passion, and impact behind their work.

Thank you to the Communique No. 1 filming crew (Dan, Hilary, & Alex) for bringing these stories to life with such care and creativity.

María Sparrow, Slavery North Spring 2026 Artist-in-Residence Fellow, shares a research update about her recent research trip to Salta, Argentina:

"While on my research trip in Salta, Argentina, to examine the archives looking for evidence of enslaved women, I ended up being drawn to women’s freedom suits in the judicial archives at the Archivo Hístorico Provincial de Salta.

I was initially looking for women of African descent in cases regarding sumptuary laws (which were laws regulating dress along racial lines). The colonial judicial archive–which would have largely involved subaltern classes–had been purged, and so cases involving women of African descent from that period had been lost.

What does it mean when certain records are allowed to disappear?

What I found instead were numerous freedom suits from the Independence period. I became interested in a particular case, written about by Roberto Závala Matienzo, of a woman named María Manuela Arias. I was struck by what is purported to be her testimony. Though it is certainly a mediated version of her speech, it still represents her resistance to enslavement, her desires, her will. If we lean in, we can listen to her voice."

Image caption: Arias-Rengel House Museum in Salta, Argentina. I have been trying to find out if this prominent colonial family could have enslaved María Manuela Arias or her forebears.

Zadi Zokou, Slavery North Spring 2026 Artist-in-Residence Fellow, shares a research update about his current project and research:

"My project examines the life and achievements of Paul Cuffe (1759–1817), the son of a formerly enslaved African father and a Wampanoag mother. Cuffe attained considerable wealth through his involvement in the whaling and maritime industries. Notably, he was an early advocate for the repatriation of Africans to Africa, preceding the efforts of later figures such as Marcus Garvey.

I began my research online, gathering articles, books, and consulting experts. The Paul Cuffe exhibit at the New Bedford Whaling Museum provided valuable information and visuals, while an authorized online database from the New Bedford Historical Society gave access to primary documents. My next step is to review archives at the museum and the Westport Historical Society in Paul Cuffe’s hometown.

The fellowship supports independent research, but The Slavery North Initiative offered valuable guidance and resources, sometimes through their own network. Input from other fellows was also beneficial, as we regularly discussed our projects together.

After collecting comprehensive information and conducting expert interviews, I have completed an initial draft of my forthcoming documentary. While there is still significant work ahead, the support provided by the North Slavery Initiative fellowship has offered an exceptional foundation for this project.”

Captions:
Zokou's first visit to the New Bedford Whaling Museum

Filming the ocean in Westport, Massachusetts, Paul Cuffe’s hometown

Pre-interview conversation with Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes, curator for the New Bedford Whalin Museum’s Paul Cuffe exhibit 2018

Interview of Lamont Thomas, author and Paul Cuffe’s biographer

On April 22, 2026, Charmaine A. Nelson (Founding Director of Slavery North and Editor-in-Chief of Black Maple Magazine) gave a lecture at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.

The lecture, “Joe the Pressman: How an African-Born Man Refused a Life of Slavery in Canada,” is available to watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/aa58nqYSBBI?si=EHjOHex_sThX4Q3F

Dr. Sherry Johnson, Slavery North Spring 2026 Visiting Professor Fellow, shares a research update about her recently published monograph.

She shares:

"Lawrence Hill’s neo-slave narrative, The Book of Negroes, offers readers entry into the real-lived experiences of thousands of Black people in 18th-century Canada–a history that the official national narrative obscures. Such is the magic of historical fiction. As it digitally presents how Aminata Diallo’s journey through the US and into Canada ruptures the nation’s official narrative of Black history in the 18th century, it is my hope that Reading Black Life renders Canada and the US’s shared history of slavery accessible to broad audiences of students in K-12 and post-secondary classrooms, in Canada and the US, across all demographics. And, more: I hope that reading about Black geographies in North America stretches the study of Black American literature and history beyond the limits of the 49th parallel."

Book cover design by Marisa S. Modugno. Foreground feature image, Bedford Basin near Halifax by Robert Petley, accessed on Library and Archives Canada. Background feature image, pages from Book of Negroes, compiled from source images (pages four and five) in the National Archives Catalog.

https://iopn.library.illinois.edu/scalar/reading-black-canada/index

Olivia Haynes, Slavery North Spring 2026 Graduate Student Fellow, shares a research update about her archival findings.

She shares:
"One place I’ve been trying to locate Black birth workers is in almshouse records. These were spaces that offered “care” to the poor, but also regulated and confined them.

Black single pregnant women appear throughout these records. In this entry, Eliza Johnson, a 22-year-old from Philadelphia, comes to the almshouse for aid and is described as “indolent” and “stupid.”

This kind of negative characterization shows up repeatedly in how Black women are recorded, shaping them as idle and undeserving. The language does more than describe; it helps me construct the broader white social understanding of Black women in the 18th and 19th centuries."

Jamie McGhee, Slavery North Spring 2026 Artist-in-Residence Fellow, shares a research update about the New York Conspiracy of 1741 and racial paranoia.

She shares:

“How does the state manipulate fear to justify violence and maintain power?

‘The Hunted and the Hanged’ analyzes how racial paranoia and social control converged during the New York Conspiracy of 1741. The novel follows the enslaved victims who were wrongfully accused of arson and burned at the stake.

I’ve spent the semester reconstructing the events from the perspective of the enslaved themselves, rather than the judge who kept the records. Unfortunately—but predictably—their voices are almost entirely missing from the archive. The only traces that remain are their testimonies as filtered through the court report. Because of this, the novel necessarily becomes an act of critical fabulation.

Along the way, I’ve asked myself:

How do you represent tragedy through art?
How do you recreate violence without reifying it?
What are the ethical responsibilities of a writer?

I’ll never know exactly what transpired during that brutal, bloody spring that saw 200 enslaved men and women wrongfully arrested. I’ll never understand their terror and their rage as they faced exile and ex*****on. But I hope that I can at least bring honor to the story, and encourage more people to seek the truth about this tragedy for themselves.”