Freedom colonies

…to be topic of Mid-Peninsula African-American genealogy group’s July 11 meeting

Middle Peninsula African-American Genealogical and Historical Society (MPAAGHS) will conduct its monthly meeting virtually at 11 a.m. Saturday, July 11. The meeting will feature a talk by Darold Cuba entitled “Mapping Freedom: Mapping all of the ‘freedom colonies’ in the world.”

Cuba will discuss his Mapping Freedom project on the international phenomenon of  “safe spaces” — freedom colonies and other communities that resisted and escaped Western colonialism to protect themselves from terrorism. These spaces are located around the world with more than 5,000 having been identified in the United States alone. Examples are “freedom countries” such as Haiti, Liberia, Eritrea and Ethiopia as well as the quilombos and mocambos of Brazil; maroons throughout the Caribbean and Latin America; and communities in the Great Dismal Swamp region of Virginia and North Carolina. The Mapping Freedom project is creating a digital database…