Using works from the PMA collection, alongside stories drawn from the Portland Freedom Trail, historian Seth Goldstein explores Portland's 19th-century Black community and its role in assisting self-emancipators traveling north following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The lecture highlights the history of Munjoy Hill, the Abyssinian Meeting House, and the maritime networks that connected Portland to the Underground Railroad.
About Seth Goldstein
Seth Goldstein received his bachelor’s degree in European History from the University of California at Santa Cruz and his master’s degree in World History from Northeastern University. His research interests include the historic North Atlantic fishery, global piracy, New England shipwrecks and lighthouses, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Vietnam War era counterculture. He is a member of the Atlantic Black Project; a grass roots non-profit that examines Maine and New England’s marginalized history and the regions complicity with the economics of enslavement. Seth is the Director of the Cushing’s Point Museum at Bug Light Park and is the Director of Development for the South Portland Historical Society.
