“Borderland between Earth and Heaven”: Legacies of Disability & Enslavement in Boston’s Home for Aged Colored Women

This seminar will workshop a work in progress. 
The event is virtual and free of charge.

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Focusing on the intertwined legacies of slavery and disability, this paper examines how elderly women of color complicated social, economic, and political terrains in the nineteenth century through the microcosm of Boston’s Home for Aged Colored Women. The Home was a multigenerational and interabled site of Black womanhood. Its organizers reflected specific philosophies of dignity, deservedness, and vulnerability. Those seeking aid modeled their behavior on these expectations, creating cyclical meaning-making around gender, race, and (dis)ability. Mining the archive reveals the community networks that facilitated this crucial support and underexplored narratives of poor, working class, illiterate, and/or disabled women of color.