UO Today with Leslie Alexander

Leslie Alexander, associate professor of History at the University of Oregon, and author of African or American?: Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861. Alexander discusses the challenges of identity and politics emancipated Blacks faced in antebellum New York. She also talks about the thriving Black settlement of Seneca Village. The village was destroyed in 1857, twenty-two years after its establishment, to make way for the development of Central Park. In addition, Alexander talks about her current research about the establishment of Haiti as a free Black republic and its symbolic power for Blacks in 19th-century America.