Duke University scholar Thavolia Glymph will explore the legal consciousness of enslaved people before the Civil War during the annual Gilder Jordan Lecture in Southern Cultural History at the University of Mississippi. The Oct. 8 lecture is also part of the SouthTalks series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Submitted photo
Slavery scholar to explore race and barriers
by Rebecca Lauck Cleary
One of the nation’s top scholars of slavery and gender will explore how much enslaved people in the South knew about the law and how that influenced their decisions to flee to the North in this year’s Gilder-Jordan Lecture in Southern Cultural History at the University of Mississippi.
Thavolia Glymph, a professor at the Duke University School of Law, plans to explore the enslaved people’s legal consciousness at 6 p.m. Oct. 8 in Nutt Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.
A large and robust body of literature has enriched people’s understanding of the flight of enslaved people to Union lines during the Civil War, Glymph said. Relatively little attention, however, has been paid to the role their understanding of the law played in the decision to pursue freedom.
“The lecture will focus on how an understanding of the law guided enslaved people’s decision to flee to Union lines,” Glymph said.
Glymph holds the Peabody Family Distinguished Professorship in History at Duke, is a faculty research scholar at the Duke University Population Research Institute and is the first Black woman to be president of the American Historical Association.
She has spent her career writing and studying about Black women, race and barriers. Her books include “Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household” (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and “The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation” (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
“I anticipate a prolific talk that will examine the institution that without a doubt had more impact on this country than any other institution, and that is the institution of slavery, and that legacy is still in place today,” said Charles Ross, UM professor of history and African American studies and interim director of the university’s African studies program.
“Her talk is very appropriate and timely with what is going on in this country, with the opportunity for the American people to elect an African American woman, and what an historic achievement that would be, if it takes place.”
Organized through the university’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture, African American studies program, Center for Civil War Research and Department of History, the series is made possible through the generosity of the Gilder Foundation Inc. The series honors the late Richard Gilder, of New York, and his family, as well as Ole Miss alumni Dan and Lou Jordan, of Virginia.
For more information, visit https://southernstudies.
