Myra Young Armstead to speak on "The Hudson River Valley in the Antebellum African-American Imagination" 

What did African Americans think about the Hudson River Valley in the antebellum period?  What kind of region did they imagine it to be? Myra Young Armstead, the Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies at Bard College will deliver the 2017 Cunneen-Hackett Lecture in Hudson River Valley History on the subject of "The Hudson River Valley in the Antebellum African-American Imagination." Her talk, presented by the Hudson River Valley Institute, will explore the ways that free and newly freed blacks invested meaning in the local landscape during a period of prosperity and growth.

       "The Hudson River Valley in the Antebellum African-American Imagination"
                 2017 Cunneen-Hackett Lecture in Hudson River Valley History
                                     Myra Young Armstead of Bard College
                                             Thursday, April 27, 7:00 P.M. 
                                  Nelly Goletti Theatre, Murray Student Center
                                                Free and open to the public

Armstead is the recipient of a New York State African-American Research Institute fellowship, the Frederick Douglass Award from the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life, and is a member of the New York Academy of History. She is the author of Freedom's Gardener: James F. Brown, Horticulture, and the Hudson Valley in Antebellum America (2012) and Mighty Change, Tall Within: Black Identity in the Hudson Valley (2003).

The Charlotte Cunneen-Hackett Lecture Series in Hudson River Valley History, established in 2001, was created to advance the appreciation of our region’s rich heritage. The Hudson River Valley Institute’s mission is to study and promote the region and to provide educational resources for heritage tourists, scholars, educators, and the general public. The Institute’s projects include publication of The Hudson River Valley Review and the management of a dynamic Digital Library and leading regional portal site.