Abolitionists vs. The New York Kidnapping Club

Guest: Jonathan Daniel Wells, Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, and author of "The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War"

The Fugitive Slave Clause required states to return escaped enslaved people to their Southern enslavers. Nefarious groups like the New York "Kidnapping Club" capitalized on this clause and terrorized Black communities by kidnapping free Black children and selling them to plantations in the South.

 

The Great Dismal Swamp

Guest: Dan Sayers, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at American University; Director of the Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study; author of “A Desolate Place for a Defiant People: The Archaeology of Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and Enslaved Laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp”

Enveloped by swamp land, mosquitoes, brush, and sweltering heat, the Great Dismal Swamp harbored a hidden maroon community of runaway enslaved people, Native Americans, and others who established a free society that lasted for centuries. Capitalizing on whites' fear of swamps, these maroon people lived for generations in a land apart, yet within the borders of Virginia and North Carolina.