Myra Young Armstead Spoke with the Times Union about the Life and Legacy of James F. Brown, “One of the Country’s First Black Master Gardeners”
While slave narratives—“first-person retellings of the enslaved experience”—were persuasive to white abolitionists and widely distributed, quieter but no less important details about the early years of emancipation can be found in the diaries of one of the country’s first Black Master Gardeners, James F. Brown. Myra Young Armstead, vice president for academic inclusive excellence and Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies, spoke with the Times Union about Brown’s life and legacy. “In the period before the Civil War, freedom in the most obvious sense for a runaway meant emancipation,” Armstead said. “It also meant freedom from wage slavery, and freedom to operate in the civic sphere. We can explore the many meanings of freedom in the antebellum period through James’s diary.”
Post Date: 02-14-2023
Post Date: 02-14-2023