Educated for Freedom in a Slaveholding Nation

Guest: Anna Mae Duane, Associate Professor, English and American Studies, University of Connecticut, and author, "Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys Who Grew Up to Change a Nation"

As fugitive slaves before the Civil War, James McCune Smith and Henry Highland Garnet were educated at the New York African Free School to compete with the best and brightest in America. But even some of the teachers there thought America would never be a land of equality and that the graduates should return to Africa to live truly free lives. These two boys set out to prove that America was a land of promise for all. 

 

Robert Smalls, Unsung Civil War Hero

Guest: Douglas Egerton, Professor, History, Le Moyne College

Historian Douglas Egerton explores the legacy of one Civil War hero you probably haven’t heard of. Robert Smalls was an enslaved man who took over a Confederate ship, freed sixteen other enslaved people, and turned the Confederate ship over to the Union. Then he went on to have a fiery legislative career.