Podcast appearances and mentions of sydney nathans

Panelist will discuss A Mind to Stay - White Plantations - Black Homeland. This story researched and written by Sydney Nathans begins in 1844, when North Carolina planter Paul Cameron bought 1,600 acres near Greensboro, Alabama and sent out 114 enslaved people to cultivate cotton and enlarge his fortune. Syd Nathans is a historian and author of "A Mind to Stay," which tells the story of a white plantation that became a black homeland to formerly enslaved people. Based on decades of oral interviews with descendants, the book illuminates how African Americans got land and why successive generations fought to hold it for 150 years. Angela Peay is a Stagville descendant. Angela’s genealogy quest has traced her direct maternal ancestry to Durham, North Carolina’s State Historic Stagville Plantation Site. Her maternal great grandmother was born in 1863 which was right at the cusp of slavery’s end.  She is pending lineage results from Ancestory.com. She currently works in the Pharma/Biotech field. Michael Williams is an eight generation Stagville Descendant.  Since Michael’s 1996 Adoption Search &  Reunion journey he has traced his direct maternal ancestry to Durham, North Carolina’s State Historic Stagville Plantation Site.  Michael currently works in Healthcare and he is a genetic genealogy coach and presenter with Sankofa Genealogy Tech Seminars. Theresa Williams-Stoudamire is a retired healthcare administrator.  Her undergraduate degree is in history. Upon retirement, she decided to explore her family roots.  All four of her familial lines relocated to NYC during the Great Migration from the South. Her paternal lines both hailed from North Carolina. As she delved into her Durham family's past she discovered that her great grandparents were enslaved on Stagville plantation.  

Natonne Elaine Kemp welcomes author Sydney Nathans, Ph.D. for a discussion of his book TO FREE A FAMILY! TO FREE A FAMILY is the story of Mary Walker, an enslaved woman from North Carolina who escaped bondage in 1848, left her children and mother behind, and spent seventeen years seeking to recover them through ransom, ruse, or rescue.  Using the records of her one-time owners, the vast and vivid letters of the white antislavery couple who befriended and helped her, and an arsenal of social history sources, the book reconstructs her experience in bondage and brings to life the anguished but unrelenting quest to liberate her family.  Her story illustrates a hidden epic of emancipation--the secret striving of refugees from slavery to redeem one family at a time--which paralleled the great social movement to end slavery altogether. TO FREE A FAMILY is the 2013 recipient of the Darlene Clark Hine Award of the Organization of American Historians as the best book in African-American Women's and Gender History.  The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery,Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University jury for the Center’s Frederick Douglass Book Prize has selected  To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker, as one of three finalists for this year’s award. Sydney Nathans, Ph.D. is the Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University and a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations.

Chris Gondek interviews Sydney Nathans of Duke University about the efforts of escaped slave Mary Walker to liberate her family from North Carolina.

Chris Gondek interviews Sydney Nathans of Duke University about the efforts of escaped slave Mary Walker to liberate her family from North Carolina.

Chris Gondek interviews Sydney Nathans of Duke University about the efforts of escaped slave Mary Walker to liberate her family from North Carolina.

Chris Gondek interviews Sydney Nathans of Duke University about the efforts of escaped slave Mary Walker to liberate her family from North Carolina.