Lecture: Domestic Architecture of Chesapeake Slavery

The speaker will be Dennis J. Pogue, associate research professor at University of Maryland College Park. The generic image of housing for enslaved Blacks in the American South is of small wooden cabins in rickety rows along the margins of plantation society. Pogue's ongoing research finds far greater diversity in slave housing developed over time, reflecting local conditions, social and demographic trends, and economic factors. With 120 buildings documented so far, Pogue will place the findings within the broader context of slavery in the region, and will detail the processes of documenting and interpreting these structures.