Thursday, July 31 at 6:30 PM
Black and White Families in the Age of Slavery: A Maine History Talk by Carol Gardner

Carol Gardner will offer a talk based on her latest history book, The Divided North: Black and White Families in the Age of Slavery, which contrasts two families in Portland, Maine in the turbulent 1800s. This dual-family biography demonstrates that the North was a critical proving ground for American ideals of freedom and equality, as telling as any town, plantation, or battlefield in the South. The experiences of these families help reveal what it meant to live in a free state during the age of slavery, with all the promise, disappointment, irony, and hope that the notion entailed.

Carol Gardner is author of The Involuntary American: A Scottish Prisoner’s Journey to the New World. She has written pieces for The Washington Post, Portland Press Herald, Time-Life Books, and The Women’s Review of Books, among others. She collaborated on content development, writing, and editing for Blue Planet Quarterly, a magazine on ocean issues.

For more information or for Zoom links, please email elewis@rocklandmaine.gov.