Manisha Sinha, an Indian-born American historian and author, will present “A New History of Abolition and Emancipation” on Friday, June 19, at 7 p.m., at Cazenovia’s Catherine Cummings Theatre on Lincklaen Street.
Here is the announcement:
Sponsored by the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum (NAHOF), the free public lecture will commemorate Juneteenth, an American federal holiday celebrating the effective end of slavery in the United States. It marks the day in 1865 when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce that the state’s enslaved people were free — a full two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
“In my work, I not only reimagine abolition as an interracial, radical social movement, which had the dual goal to destroy slavery and establish black citizenship, but I [also] center the enslaved in its history,” said Sinha. “American slaves were the original abolitionists, and their resistance radicalized abolitionists, through the political and legal controversies over fugitive slave rendition and the development of the abolitionist underground, the UGRR. Unknown Black abolitionists, not just famous figures like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth, constituted the heart of the movement and did not just lie at its peripheries.”
Sinha holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and was a 2022 recipient of the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
Her 2016 book, “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition,” won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize and was long listed for the National Book Award for Non-Fiction.
Her most recent major work, published in 2024, is “The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920.”
“The history of emancipation is often told as a top down, singular event during the Civil War in traditional historical narratives,” Sinha said. “In my new book on the Civil War and Reconstruction, I argue that the agenda for emancipation and black rights was not only set by abolitionists before the war, but that we must understand wartime emancipation as a process that involved many historical actors. This process unfolded during the war when nearly half a million southern slaves voted with their feet to join Union Army lines and put emancipation on the agenda of the nation. An antislavery President, Congress, the Union Army, and abolitionist allies all contributed to making emancipation a reality.”
Sinha taught for over 20 years at the University of Massachusetts, where she was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal, the highest honor bestowed on faculty. She is currently the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut.
According to Sinha, her Indian background and upbringing have informed the lens through which she analyzes and interprets US history.
“As an Indian American immigrant, I realized that the long struggle for Black freedom has expanded the boundaries of American democracy for all people — citizens and immigrants,” she said.
“Not just immigrants but every American citizen owes a debt of gratitude to the abolitionists and Civil Rights activists for the rights we enjoy today, national citizenship by birthright or naturalization, and the nationalization of the ‘Bill of Rights’ regardless of color, race, ethnicity, or religion,” she said. “Having grown up in India, I can appreciate the global significance of many of the victories of American constitutional democracy, but also the terrible impact of American retreat from its revolutionary and democratic ideals.”
The gathering was held on Aug. 21-22, 1850, in opposition to the impending Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a controversial federal law that mandated the return of escaped slaves to their owners, even if they were in free states.
The act placed the responsibility for capturing and returning these individuals on federal officials.
It also imposed harsh penalties, including fines and imprisonment, on anyone who aided or obstructed the capture of fugitive slaves.
Reported to have drawn more than 2,000 attendees, including an estimated 50 fugitive slaves, the gathering opened at the First Congregational Church of Cazenovia — now the Catherine Cummings Theatre — before relocating the next day to Grace Wilson’s orchard on Sullivan Street to accommodate the crowds.
“It is really heartening for me to give a lecture on the same spot that the Cazenovia convention, vowing resistance to the draconian federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, was held,” Sinha said. “Most northern citizens rejected acting as slave patrollers for southern slaveholders, and abolitionists risked imprisonment and hefty fines for their defiance. These radical abolitionists included many local black and white abolitionists like Gerritt Smith, Jermain Loguen, Charles Ray, the Edmonson sisters, who abolitionists had ransomed from captivity, and Frederick Douglass. For me, as a historian of abolition, to be talking at the venue of the famous Cazenovia fugitive slave convention that issued a ringing call to the enslaved from ‘those who have fled American slavery’ is both an honor and a dream come true.”
Pre-registration for the event is encouraged. Sign up on the events page at nationalabolitionhalloffameandmuseum.org. The webpage also lists other upcoming 2026 NAHOF programs.
The NAHOF is located in Peterboro, NY, in the same building that hosted the inaugural meeting of the New York State Antislavery Society in 1835.
According to its mission statement, the 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.”
The museum is open to the public on weekends from 12 to 4 p.m. from June 6 through Oct. 25. For more information, contact nahofm1835@gmail.com.
