Author Philip Dray discusses the Hudson River Valley background and legacy of a notorious 1892 incident of racial violence, in his presentation: "A Lynching at Port Jervis: Race and Reckoning in the Gilded Age."
"Philip Dray's [book] excavates the details of a rarely discussed, horrific 1892 event in the American North, dispelling many of our preconceived notions that lynchings occurred only in the South. Yet what makes Dray even more than a faithful chronicler of this nation's troubling and troubled past...is his extraordinary and artful storytelling." -- Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois
"In this riveting, beautifully written book, Dray shines a spotlight on the forgotten national dimensions of the Southern barbarism of lynching. He effortlessly weaves the story of a place, a crime, and a people and recovers its broader historical significance." -- Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition
Cultural historian Philip Dray is an adjunct faculty instructor in the Journalism + Design Department at the Eugene Lang College in New York City.
His books include A Lynching at Port Jervis: Race and Reckoning in the Gilded Age (2022); Capitol Men: The Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen (2008); At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (2002); and We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi (1988), written with Seth Cagin.
Dray is also the author of children’s book, Yours for Justice, Ida B. Wells: The Daring Life of a Crusading Journalist (2008).
He work has received numerous awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction. He was also a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
A Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities, he’s been a Visiting Scholar at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University and holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts from the University of Minnesota, with a concentration in American Studies.
Admission is FREE
Pre-registration is highly recommended, as space is limited:
This program is presented in partnership with Historic Huguenot Street, the Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis Black History Cultural Center, the Elting Memorial Library, New Paltz Historical Society, and the SUNY New Paltz Black Studies Department.
Special thanks to Andreas du Bois, direct descendant of Louis du Bois' brother, and his wife Susanna du Bois for their generous contribution to this presentation and our organizations’ work to expose the history of enslavement in the Hudson Valley.