online: www.rihumanities.org email: info@rihumanities.org phone: 401-273-2250
This talk, and accompanying book, was developed based on letters written in 1931 to the speaker's great-grandfather, then a 91-year-old Union Army veteran who fought at Gettysburg, from Victor Chambers, a man born on the Gettysburg battlefield to a runaway slave. Chambers' mother, a daughter of free blacks in Philadelphia, was kidnapped from her parents by slave catchers and enslaved on a Virginia tobacco plantation for 37 years before she made her escape to Gettysburg (a key stop on the Underground Railroad) on the night before the historic Civil War battle erupted. Her son, Victor Chambers went on to become an artist, and eventually moved to Providence, RI in 1898. It is more than a story about one particular family's search for freedom, it is the story of a whole people whose lives, sufferings and deaths form an integral part of our shared history and legacy as Americans. Included also are other stories of 19th and 20th century African-Americans in Rhode Island, including the artists Edward M. Bannister and Nanccy Elizabeth Prophet.
Harriette Rinaldi served in a variety of executive, managerial, and leadership positions throughout her career with the Central Intelligence Agency. She is a graduate of Salve Regina University, Brown University, the University of Paris and the Brookings Institute. She received numerous awards during her career with the CIA, and currently teaches leadership seminars for corporate and government executives throughout the country.
Needs: Lighted lectern/water; easels for display of posters; Books available for sale upon request