Africana Studies Affiliate Lecture Series
Whispers of Freedom: Exploring Laura Beecher Comer's Diary through the Prism of the Comer Slaves' Resistance
Dr. Carol Ann Bachl Dennis, an Assistant Professor of History at Alabama State University, received her Ph.D. from Auburn University in 2012 where she also taught in the Africana Studies Program.
In 1862, Laura Beecher Comer, cousin of Harriet Beecher Stowe, emphatically described in her diary those she enslaved as "certainly, not more than half civilized." Departing from past practice of mining Comer's diary for insight into the attitudes of the plantation elite, Dr. Dennis considers how Comer's diary testifies to resistance, disruption, and sabotage in anticipation of freedom and the coming of a great day of jubilee.
Date and Time: Thursday, November 21 at 3:30 - 4:15 p.m.
Location: Special Collections and Archives, Ground Floor, Ralph Brown Draughon Library.
Reception to follow.