-Written by Erin Burke ’18
Erin Burke ’18 at the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum in Peterboro
This summer I was fortunate to have the opportunity to intern for the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum (NAHOFM), located in Peterboro, NY. NAHOFM is a non-profit museum that explores the history of American abolition by offering exhibitions, guided tours, educational programs, and special events. NAHOFM’s main historical exhibition spans from antislavery agitation in the Colonial period to the Reconstruction amendments that granted African Americans citizenship and African American men the right to vote. Although NAHOFM is a museum that ostensibly deals with the past, NAHOFM interprets the history of abolition to be living history that continues up to the present day. NAHOFM thinks beyond abolition and questions what legal equality really entailed and entails. In the period following Reconstruction, the establishment of Jim Crow, poll taxes, and the KKK sought to deprive African Americans of their rights and restore white supremacy; today, institutional racism and a resurgence of racist politics continue to oppress Black Americans. NAHOFM’s mission statement reflects their commitment to sharing the past in order to question the present and imagine a better future: “The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum honors antislavery abolitionists, their work to end slavery, and strives to complete the second and ongoing abolition: the moral conviction to end racism.”
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