Engaging Community Luncheon
The 11th annual YWCA Engaging Communities Luncheon: Keeping the Stories Alive: Exploring Newburyport’s Black Heritage is taking place on April 28, 2021, from 12:00 – 1:00 PM via Zoom.
Guest Speaker: Kabria Baumgartner, Ph.D
Honorary Chair: Senator Diana DiZoglio
Community Champions:
Amanda Haggstrom, Amesbury City Clerk
Richard B. Jones, Newburyport City Clerk
Melinda J. Morrison, Salisbury Town Clerk
About our guest speaker:
For the last two years, Kabria Baumgartner and a team of researchers have been digging through archival records at repositories and historical societies, seeking to learn more about the African American experience in Essex County, Massachusetts, a national heritage area. In this talk, she will share some of the compelling stories that she found, like the one about the nineteenth-century “African princess,” Sara Baro of Ipswich, or the one about twentieth-century activist Nelson Ricks who worked at Newburyport’s Atkinson Coal Company. Exploring these stories is vital, not only to highlight African American contributions to the economic development as well as the cultural and intellectual wealth of Essex County but also to gain a deeper appreciation for the diversity among African descended people who have called Newburyport home.
Kabria Baumgartner, Ph.D., is an associate professor of English and American Studies and core faculty in the Women’s and Gender Studies department at the University of New Hampshire, where she was named the 2019 Outstanding Assistant Professor. Her research and writing interests focus on African American history, literature, and culture in nineteenth-century New England. She is the author of the award-winning book, In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America (New York University Press, 2019), which tells the story of African American girls and women who fought to democratize public and private schools in the nineteenth-century Northeast. She has also published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, and her op-eds and other popular writing have been featured in the Washington Post, WBUR’s blog Cognoscenti, and Historic New England Magazine. She is writing a biography of the African American lawyer Robert Morris. To learn more, visit www.kabriabaumgartner.com.
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