The landscape of slavery
For 45 minutes, Harvard historian Walter Johnson read from a chapter of his forthcoming book at the Radcliffe Gymnasium. An uneasy stillness filled the hall at the conclusion of his presentation. It was Johnson’s topic that prompted the crowd’s strained reaction. “It’s going to get grim really fast,” warned Harvard’s Winthrop Professor of History and professor of African and African-American studies early in his talk on Wednesday (Dec. 15). Using the words of former slaves and slaveholders, Johnson painted a harsh and violent picture of the pre-Civil War Mississippi Valley region. Johnson wove his inhumane tale using the narratives of people such as John Andrew Jackson, a slave from South Carolina who eventually escaped to freedom in Canada; Solomon Northup, a freeman from New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery; John Parker, a former slave from Virginia who became part of the Underground Railroad, as well as stories about slave owners. “I...