Lecture to Focus on Slavery and Abolition in Lawrence

Editor's Note: The following is a news release issued by the Lawrence Historical Society.

Closing out for 2011 is the annual Mary Tanner Lecture presented by the Lawrence Historical Society.

It will be held on Sunday, Oct. 23, at and will feature a groundbreaking piece of research by two historians from Rider, Professors Brooke Hunter and Roderick McDonald.

Their talk is entitled “Slavery and Abolition in Lawrence Township, New Jersey.”

They have dug into the details of census data, courthouse records, and other primary sources to document the extent and nature of slavery in Lawrence – who the slaves were, who their owners were, where they lived, what they did, how they gained their freedom, and how they adjusted to that freedom.

Their lecture will begin at 2 p.m. in Lecture Hall 102 of the Science & Technology Center on the Rider campus.

It is free and open to the public. No reservations are required.

Brooke Hunter is associate professor of history at Rider. Her research focuses on the mid-Atlantic region in the Age of Revolution. She received Rider's Distinguished Teaching Award 2011-12.

Roderick McDonald is professor of history at Rider and editor emeritus of the Journal of the Early Republic. An expert on the history of slavery, he is the author of several books on African American and Afro-Caribbean history, and is a 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow.

For more information contact Lawrence Township Historian Dennis Waters (dpwaters@gmail.com) or visit www.TheLHS.org.