Runaway Art: Northern Colonial Slavery

"We need to find a way to talk about that"

A powerful ad from a 1766 NY Gazette telling the story of Northern Colonial slavery - and resistance. Nathaniel may or may not be naked; he’s worth an Eight Dollar Reward. This and ads like it inspired Runaway Art, an educational/art program Historic Hudson Valley and the Center for Arts Education brought to NYC middle schoolers.

Right here in Sleepy Hollow, a mere 30 min. train ride from NYC, there’s a former working plantation just down the road. The enslaved of this farm built the famous Old Dutch Church immortalized in Irving’s Legend. (But it’s their master Philipse who gets his name on the plaque of course.) Many find it mind-blowing that slavery didn’t just exist in the South, or only leading up to the Civil War. It was right here in New York and enabling the wealth-building of our earliest white colonists.

In what I can honestly say has been my best day job to date, I had the honor of working at Philipsburg Manor and with the HHV nonprofit that runs it as a living museum of this often-unsavory history, organizing this important program and the making of this great video: