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The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum (NAHOF) commemoration ceremonies for the 2016 inductees to the Hall of Fame will be heldSaturday, October 21, 2017 at NAHOF, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro NY 13134. The inductees are Rev. John Gregg Fee, Beriah Green, Angelina Grimké, and James W.C. Pennington. This is the last year of the two year induction-commemoration cycle. Beginning in 2018 inductions and commemorations will be completed in one year.
Rev. John Gregg Fee will be presented during the afternoon Abolition Symposia at 12:00 by Alicestyne Turley PhD, Director of the Carter G. Woodson Center for Interracial Education, Berea College, Berea KY. Turley and Lyle Roelofs PhD, President Berea College, nominated Rev. Fee to the Hall of Fame. Dr. Roelofs was formerly with Colgate University in Hamilton NY. Turley will be traveling with students from Rev. Fee’s college for the commemoration.
Reverend John Gregg Fee was born in 1816 as the eldest son of a slaveholding family in Bracken County KY. At the age of 26 Fee enrolled in Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati OH and became fully converted to the cause of immediate abolition. Fee sold Indiana land given to him by his father and used the funds to purchase the freedom of Jullet Miles, the black woman that cared for him as a child, and to establish his first anti-slavery ministry on Cabin Creek in Lewis County, Kentucky. In 1855, as a resident of Madison County KY, Fee and members of his church founded the town of Berea and Berea Institute, which became Berea College in 1859. Berea was the first college in the South devoted to the co-education of men and women, blacks and whites. As an anti-slavery advocate, born into a slaveholding family below the Mason-Dixon Line, Fee promulgated his non-violent, anti-slavery views in a hostile environment with little support for protections from the law, family, friends or association at the height of America’s most violently aggressive proslavery and anti-slavery period.
The other three inductees will also be presented during the afternoon Abolition Symposia: Milton C. Sernett will present The Odd Couple: Beriah Green and Gerrit Smith at 1:00, Louise Knight will present The Remarkable Transformation: Angelina Grimké’s Journey at 2:00, and Christopher L. Webber will present James W.C. Pennington: Pastor and Abolitionist.
During the 7:00 pm Saturday Commemoration Ceremonies Dr. Turley will briefly describe the legacy of Rev. Fee as an inductee to the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum. Relatives, friends and associates who are sponsors of Rev. Fee’s inductee banner for the Hall will introduce themselves and their relationship to Fee. The sponsors will unveil the banner to be installed in the Hall. The Fee banner will include Fee’s official NAHOF portrait created by artist Melissa Moshetti, biographical information, his abolition legacy, and the name of the sponsors. (Seventy-five dollar sponsorships are due to NAHOF by October 8.)
Max Alden Smith, CoChair of the Annual Peterboro Emancipation Day will provide musical renditions of slavery, abolition, and freedom throughout the evening. Jan DeAmicis, Co-Chair of the Oneida County Freedom Trail Commission, will commemorate the 182nd anniversary of the inaugural meeting of the New York State Antislavery Society. Abolitionists convened in Utica October 21, 2017 to form an abolition organization, but were mobbed more than once by a mob headed by Congressman Beardsley. The meeting resumed in Peterboro the next morning and completed the organization of an antislavery society.
The evening ceremonies will follow the 5:00 pm annual 19th C. Antislavery Dinner catered by Jessica Bradbury and staff at the Peterboro General Store Deli on the Green with a menu inspired by Elizabeth Smith Miller’s In the Kitchen cookbook. Tisha Lock, Head Merchant for the Peterboro Mercantile will have books, buttons, stationery and other items related to the inductions, and Peterboro history, available at the event. Book signings by presenting authors will be available.
At 8:00 am Saturday, October 21 Norman K. Dann PhD, will guide a tour of the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark (5304 Oxbow Road, PO 6, Peterboro NY 13134) with attention to the 2017 Hall of Fame Inductees who visited the Estate. The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum will open at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 21.
At 9:00 on Sunday, October 22, 2017 Jan DeAmicis and Mary Hayes Gordon, Co-Chairs of the Oneida County Freedom Trail, will meet visitors in Utica for a driving and walking tour of abolition sites in Utica during Beriah Green's life. The tour will include Green's burial site and the site of the Oneida Institute, where Green served as President. At 10:00 the new interpretive signage for the Oneida County Freedom Trail will be unveiled. For more information: jandeamicis@roadrunner.com
At 12:30 Sunday, October 22, eight libraries in Madison and Oneida counties, and the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum will host a luncheon culminating a month long CommUNITY Read of Sue Monk Kidd's popular historical novel The Invention of Wings. Using an unusual format the book describes the early lives of the slaves Charlotte and Hetty and of their owners Sarah and Angelina Grimké in Charleston SC, and the later abolition lives of the Grimké's, including visits to Peterboro. The CommUNITY Read was launched September 24th during the Peterboro Women's History Weekend following a program on the abolition movement's spawning of the women's movement of which Angelina Grimké was a pivotal person. Betsy Kennedy, Director of the Cazenovia Public Library, will share information of Kidd and the meaning of the title of the book - with its connections to history. After the luncheon prepared by the Peterboro Deli on the Green with a menu inspired by the 19th century In the Kitchen cookbook writtenn by Elizabeth Smith Miller of Peterboro, Louise Knight will explain the facts and answer questions of the history used in Invention of Wings. At 2:00 pm on Sunday, October 22 author Louise Knight wil share her research for the preparation of her upcoming biography on the Grimké sisters. American Sisters: Sarah and Angelina Grimké and the First Flight for Human Rights will be published in late 2018. Knight presented the Angelina Grimké symposium program at the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum 2016 induction and will present The Remarkable Transformation: Angelina Grimké's Journey for Grimké's 2017 symposium at 2:00, Saturday, October 21.
This project is sponsored by a Humanities New York Action Grant. The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum (NAHOF) honors antislavery abolitionists, their work to end slavery, and the legacy of that struggle, and strives to complete the second and ongoing abolition – the moral conviction to end racism. NAHOF is located in Peterboro NY in the building where the New York State Anti-Slavery Society held its inaugural meeting October 22, 1835. NAHOF Museum is chartered by the New York State Education Department, on the Heritage NY Underground Railroad Trail, on the Path through History, on the I LOVE NY LBGT Trail, on the Madison County Freedom Trail, and a founder and primary of the Underground Railroad Consortium of New York State.
Registrations for meals are due by October 12. Reservations for both days of the Abolition Weekend, including meals and programs, are $75. Reservations for Saturday, October 21, including meals and programs, are $50. Reservations for Sunday, October 22, including meals and programs, are $35. Admission to each program is $5 and may be paid at the door. (Meals must be reserved.) For registration forms and for more information: www.nationalabolitionhalloffameandmuseum.org, NAHOFM1835@gmail.com, PO Box 55, Peterboro NY 13134, or 315-280-8828. For online reservations:mercantile.gerritsmith.org. For lodging: www.madisontourism.com