Research Focus Group Talk: The Many Journeys of Robert Glenn: Memory, Slavery, and the Transition to Freedom

Professor John Majewski will speak about the 1937 WPA interview of Robert Glenn, who recounted how he was sold as a child as part of the slave trade. After emancipation, he was eventually able to find his parents. Glenn’s interview is remarkably rich and detailed, and because he includes many specific names and places, Professor Majewski has been able to begin reconstructing his life using census records and other documents. The discussion will explore the possibility of using Glenn’s narrative as the basis for teaching books centered on issues of memory, the slave trade, various forms of slave resistance, and the transition to freedom after emancipation.

John Majewski is a Professor in the Department of History, where he teaches and writes about 19th-century U.S. history, with an emphasis on political economy. His publications include Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation and A House Dividing: Economic Development in Pennsylvania and Virginia before the Civil War. He is currently working on a project tentatively titled, “Inventing the Creative Citizen: Creativity and the U.S. Civil War.”

Zoom link: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/86362866754

Sponsored by the IHC’s Slavery, Captivity, and the Meaning of Freedom Research Focus Group.

Image Credit: Eyre Crowe