Posts Tagged ‘Timbuctoo’

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Timbuctoo Institute would build opportunity in the Adirondacks

john brown and timbuctoo

By Aaron Mair

The Adirondack Park is a national treasure because our ancestors had the foresight in the 1880s and 1890s to protect its forests and waters as a legacy for future generations to inherit and enjoy. Creating the Forest Preserve and the “forever wild” clause of the state constitution were bold, new ideas.

Now, more than 120 years later, we can see how smart our ancestors were. The Adirondack Park was transformed in less than a century from a smoldering mess of wildfires, clear-cut forests and muddy rivers into the world’s largest intact, temperate deciduous forest. Today, it hosts most of the rare forest wildlife, wilderness and old-growth forest remaining in the Northeast.

What caused people as far away as New York City to act?

 

» Continue Reading.


Thursday, March 3, 2016

Timbuctoo Exhibit Finds Permanent Home

timbuctooA landmark civil rights exhibit that has been seen by thousands of viewers across New York state is about to get a permanent home in Lake Placid.

The Dreaming of Timbuctoo exhibition will be installed this spring at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, where visitors will have a chance to get an up-close look at a little-known period of Adirondack and African-American history when black and white abolitionists worked together to secure equal voting rights for black New Yorkers. » Continue Reading.


Saturday, November 15, 2014

Amy Godine On Black History in the Adirondacks

TMDA LogoBlack history in the Adirondacks has an anecdotal quality, maybe because the numbers of black Adirondackers have been so few. Here’s a story of a black homesteader who was good friends with John Brown. There’s a barn that may have sheltered fugitives on the Underground Railroad.  Outside Warrensburg is a place in the woods where a black hermit lived. And so on.

The temptation – and I should know; I’ve been a lead offender – is to make a sort of nosegay out of these scattered stories, pack them all into a story by its lonesome, a chunky little sidebar, and let this stand for the black experience.

It makes a good read, and it’s efficient. And it’s wrong. It reinforces the idea that the black experience in this region was something isolated, inessential. It ghettoizes black Adirondack history, and this wasn’t how it was. » Continue Reading.


Sunday, June 15, 2014

In 1845 An Abolition Activist Toured the Adirondacks

Gerrit Smith in the 1840sLate spring of 1845 found Gerrit Smith, a leader of the Liberty Party, touring the North Country in search of disaffected “Whigs and Democrats, whose intelligence and Christian integrity will not permit them to remain longer in their pro-slavery connections.”

Smith, from Peterboro, in Madison County, traveled from Saratoga Springs, through Glens Falls and then into Essex and Clinton counties on his quest to build a credible third party, a devoted anti-slavery party. His report, printed in the Albany Patriot in late June, details the villages his visited, the people he met, and the difficulties he faced. » Continue Reading.


Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Timbuctoo, Minority Voices in Nature Poetry Programs Set

Some of the nation’s most acclaimed poets from widely diverse backgrounds will read their work as it deals with nature about writing at Paul Smith’s College VIC on August 7th

The natural world is everywhere, and we all react to it differently. How does race influence a poet writing about the natural world?  For example, a tree, for a southern black writer may have sinister qualities due to the history of lynching that a northern white writer would never consider. Acclaimed poets Cornelius Eady, Aracelis Girmay and Chase Twichell will all read their work. Following the reading will be a discussion led by poet Roger Bonair-Agard. This is expected to be a provocative discussion on race, religion, and how these factors affect one’s relationship with the natural world. The program starts at 7 p.m.; the cost is $5. » Continue Reading.



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