A hybrid event with Dr. Kate McMahon
Online and in-person at 102 Wishcamper, University of Southern Maine, Portland
In 1808, the United States made participation in the international slave trade a federal crime. However, Americans increasingly participated in this horrific and inhumane trade throughout the 19th century. Northern New England played a central role in the illegal slave trades to Brazil and Cuba during the 1830s-1860s. This talk will focus on three men from greater Portland—Samuel Trask, Rufus Soule, and Frederick Drinkwater—who organized and participated in this illegal trade, and whose stories exemplify American participation in the illegal slave trade. It will also explore the resistance by enslaved Africans, Black abolitionists, and other activists who embodied freedom making despite overwhelming odds.
About the speaker
Dr. Kate McMahon
Kate McMahon, Ph.D. is a Historian at the National Museum of African American History & Culture and leads research efforts at the Center for the Study of Global Slavery. She received her B.A. in Art History and M.A. in American and New England Studies from the University of Southern Maine. She completed her Ph.D. in History at Howard University in 2017. Her dissertation was entitled The Transnational Dimensions of Africans and African Americans in Northern New England, 1776-1865. Her current research explores New England’s connections to and complicity in the illegal slave trade and colonialism, 1809-1900. She is committed to exploring the living legacies of slavery and the slave trade in the present day and interpreting this history for a broad public through frequent public speaking engagements and scholarly production.