Unbroken Bonds: The Meaning of Slavery and Abolition in a Northern Textile City
Teacher Professional Development
Lowell is known as a historically significant hub of textile production. Less often is it examined as a place where, in the antebellum period, capitalism and slavery intersected, prompting Lowellians—Black and white—to actively oppose slavery.
We will:
- Investigate the connection—and tension—between the southern agrarian slave economy and Lowell’s industrial capitalism.
- Consider how and why Lowell’s mill workers, whose livelihoods relied on slave-picked cotton, participated in antislavery activities.
- Discuss methods for including the perspectives of Black and white Lowellians in teaching about abolition.
- Examine ways to help students apply history’s lessons so they, too, become change-makers in their community.
Who: Massachusetts secondary-school social studies teachers, curriculum coordinators, and content specialists
When: Wednesday, June 26, 2024, 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m.
Where: Tsongas Industrial History Center, Boott Cotton Mills Museum, 115 John Street, Lowell, MA
Professional Development Plan (PDP): 10 Massachusetts PDPs
Workshop Faculty:
- MaryBeth Faucher, Tsongas Industrial History Center (Lowell National Historical Park)
- Prof. Robert Forrant, University of Massachusetts Lowell
- Kristin Gallas, Tsongas Industrial History Center (UMass Lowell)
- Prof. Elizabeth Herbin-Triant, Amherst College
- Barbara Justice, Cane River Creole National Historical Park
- Prof. Seth Rockman, Brown University
This program is funded in part by Mass Humanities which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Tsongas Industrial History Center is an education partnership between the University of Massachusetts Lowell School of Education and Lowell National Historical Park.