NoirDynosaur
Yurrrrrrrrrr
Currently reading about the Underground Railroad.
Here were the main routes folks and Harriet used to get to NYC
And some behind the settlement called Timbuctoo, NJ (an ode to Timbuktu, West Afrika)
Discovering Global Timbuktu in New Jersey
Here were the main routes folks and Harriet used to get to NYC
And some behind the settlement called Timbuctoo, NJ (an ode to Timbuktu, West Afrika)
Most people have heard of Timbuktu, the fabled African city on the edge of the Sahara Desert.
But not many know about Timbuctoo in New Jersey, a 19th century settlement founded by runaway slaves and free African Americans.
And few are familiar with Timbuctoo in upstate New York, an experimental black farming colony set up in the Adirondack wilderness during the mid-1800s.
Later this month, a Rutgers University symposium will examine the legacies of all three communities and seek out their connections to the freedom struggles of African Americans. The conference—Global Timbuktu: Meanings and Narratives of Resistance in Africa and the Americas—will take place March 24-25, drawing an international assemblage of scholars, including archaeologists, historians, and curators from Timbuktu, Mali.
The symposium is being organized by the university's Center for African Studies in the School of Arts and Sciences.
Timbuktu, the city in the West African nation of Mali, was a cultural, commercial, and intellectual center from the 14th through 16th centuries, renowned for its ancient manuscripts on art, medicine, philosophy, and science.
“We see this as an opportunity to explore Timbuktu as an intellectual hub in Africa and at the same time learn more about these historic communities of the same name that are right in our own backyard,” says Carolyn Brown, a professor of history at Rutgers. “These other Timbuctoos, in New York and New Jersey, were essential to the African American anti-slavery movement, yet they are largely unknown to the public.”
On its second day, the conference moves from Rutgers to Burlington County where attendees will be able to briefly tour the excavation site where New Jersey Timbuctoo once stood. Located in Westampton Township, the settlement had more than 125 residents by mid-19th-century, as well as a school, church, and cemetery, says Guy Weston, a descendant of a Timbuctoo settler who runs a website devoted to the community and will be a speaker at the symposium
“The cemetery is the only remnant of Timbuctoo’s historic past,” Weston wrote on his website. “Although Timbuctoo continues to appear on local maps, many area residents have never heard of it or are familiar with its historical significance.”
Timbuctoo in New York, meanwhile, was set up in the Adirondack region during the 1840s as a response to a state law requiring blacks to own $250 in property to vote. Wealthy abolitionist Gerrit Smith donated huge swaths of land to draw African Americans to the region. The project even attracted the interest of famed abolitionist John Brown, who moved to the region to assist the program
Discovering Global Timbuktu in New Jersey
