The Athenaeum of Philadelphia, in collaboration with the Membership Libraries Group presents…

I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land with Alaina E. Roberts

This event is free for members of Mechanics’ Hall and $5 general admission. Reservations are required; register through Eventbrite to reserve your spot. 

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In this presentation, Alaina E. Roberts will discuss the history of Black slave-owning among the Five Tribes (the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Nations) and the Reconstruction project the United States enforced in Indian Territory (Oklahoma), which ended with the Black people in this region becoming the only group of former slaves in the world to receive reparations in the form of land.

Alaina E. Roberts is a historian who studies the intersection of Black and Native American life from the Civil War to the modern day. She is currently an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Roberts holds a Doctorate in History from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Arts in History, with honors, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.She writes, teaches, and presents public talks about Black and Native history in the West, family history, slavery in the Five Tribes (the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Nations), Native American enrollment politics, Indigeneity in North America and across the globe, Black and Native American portrayals in the media, and identity.Her first book, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land is now available for pre-order and will be available in hardcover from the University of Pennsylvania Press in April 2021. Her writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, the Journal of the Civil War Era, Al Jazeera, and the Western Historical Quarterly.