In celebration of Black History Month, the City of Cambridge Employees’ Committee on Diversity will hold a reception featuring art by local black artists, the unveiling of the 2020 Black History Month postage stamp, and a presentation by Dr. Manisha Sinha on black womens' roles in the suffrage movement Wednesday, Feb. 26, from 5-7:30 p.m., at Cambridge City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Avenue. Light refreshments will be served. This event is free and open to the public. The evening will also include remarks by Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui and City Manager Louis A. DePasquale.
Dr. Sinha’s talk will illuminate the forgotten origins of the women's suffrage movement in the abolition movement and reconsider the break between abolitionists and some feminists after the Civil War. It will show how the Reconstruction constitutional amendments opened a path to women's suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment. Despite black disenfranchisement, the Nineteenth Amendment eventually paved the way for black women to emerge as the most progressive voting block in American politics.
Manisha Sinha is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and a leading authority on the history of slavery and abolition and the Civil War and Reconstruction. Dr. Sinha was born in India and received her Ph.D from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft prize. She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina, which was named one of the 10 best books on slavery in Politico magazine in 2015 and recently featured in The New York Times’ 1619 Project. Her multiple award winning second monograph, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (2016) was long listed for the National Book Award for Non-Fiction. It was named the book of the week by Times Higher Education to coincide with its UK publication and one of three great History books of 2016 in Bloomberg News. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including two yearlong research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2016, she was named one of the top 25 women in higher education by the journal Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.
Link to event flier.
Link to event program.