CALL FOR PAPERS

Reconstructing Forgotten African Pioneers,Native Americans, and Abolitionists: "Uncovering the Early Struggles for Freedom in Illinois"

THE 2ND PUBLIC AWARENESS SYMPOSIUM

Presented By 

The African Scientific Research Institute - ASRI

at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago

September 26th-29, 2005

   
ASRI welcomes papers and panels relevant to the history, science and technology of the period during c1700's to 1800's using one or more of the following themes: Political,	Constitutional, Cultural, Economic, Social, Intellectual, Geographic, and Aesthetic

The focus for this year's symposium will provide a conduit to the study of contemporary African-American History while fostering interest and support in the application of science and technology.   We welcome proposals that engage with the discourse of "Diaspora, Migration, and Identities." The suggestions below are not intended to be prescriptive but to offer a flavor of the kinds of topics we hope to explore.

The African Scientific Research Institute, a registered Illinois nonprofit organization, has developed initiatives that include the political positions on slavery of Presidents Franklin Pierce (14th) and Abraham Lincoln (16th) as the moral principle by which to frame this symposium. 

Political and economic conditions as the foundation for many African pioneers and settlers' moving into Illinois and establishing early African-American historical communities c. 1800s will be explored. 

Historians began recording the westward movement of people into Illinois through what is now Pembroke Township, located on the Vincennes Trail from Vincennes, Indiana. It is assumed that many fugitive enslaved Africans traveled over land and by way of canals to this region from ante-bellum southern states into Illinois (c. 1847).  

Migration due to the Underground Railroad provided the fugitives an outlet-whether temporary or permanent-through which people held in bondage manifested their discontent. These complex vectors of human movement underwrote the proliferation and adaptation of cultural practices and culminated in the creation of new identities of individuals, communities, and societies.

ASRI seeks to reestablish, archaeologically, Illinois' African-American historical communities that will serve as cultural and economic revitalization initiatives designed as part of the solution to save Illinois history and in understanding the significance of these early African communities originally established by traders, missionaries and ordinary settlers. The latter group is of significant interest to the visionaries of Hopkins Park/Pembroke Township.?

This symposium seeks to explore the origins, processes, and impact of these early settlers, their communities, and societies.  This migration of fugitive African slaves was the most formative and powerful influence affecting the evolution of North America and reconfigured the demographic, economic, and religious conditions on the back country and changed the dynamics of settler-native relations. 


ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONS OR LETTERS OF INQUIRY SHOULD BE SENT TO:

Jihad Muhammad, Executive Director	           
The African Scientific Research Institute             
412 South Peoria Street                                   
University of Illinois [MC347]	                    
Chicago, Illinois 60607                                    
312-355-3229	
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or

Dr. Scott Demel
Field Museum
1400 S. Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, Illinois 60605
312-665-7831
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