CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. - The Island Studies Lecture Series January lecture returns with Margot Maddison-MacFadyen speaking on the topic ‘To be free is very sweet’.
The story of Mary Prince, a Bermudian slave, will be featured on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 7 p.m., in the faculty lounge of UPEI’s SDU Main Building.
Maddison-MacFadyen will take the audience on a journey through Prince’s life, where she details primary source evidence that not only confirms Prince’s testimony, but broadens her story of slavery and freedom.
In 1828, the Bermudian slave freed herself when she walked out her owner’s door in London, England, and never came back. She is the first known black woman to escape colonial enslavement, tell her story of survival and have it compiled and written down.
“The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself’’, first published in 1831, was part of a successful abolitionist strategy that pressured British parliament to legislate into law freedom for enslaved British subjects throughout the British empire. This was achieved through the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act that commenced on Aug. 1, 1834.
Prince became a Bermudian national hero in 2012.
Maddison-MacFadyen of Rennies Road graduated from Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2017. Her non-traditional dissertation is titled “Reclaiming Histories of Enslavement from the Maritime Atlantic and a Curriculum: The History of Mary Prince’’.
Admission to the lecture is free and everyone is welcome.
The next lecture is scheduled for Feb. 19.
For more information, call Laurie at [email protected] or at 902-894-2881.
