For African Americans issues of social justice and family have always been deeply intertwined. Librarians Lorie Wies and Julie O’Connor will present the narrative of the Lattimore family - a local African American family whose lives and activities influenced American history from the Revolutionary War through the early 20th Century.
The Lattimore’s were significant figures in the Abolitionist movement in early Albany. In 1847, they moved to Saratoga County where their activism continued. Members of the large multi-generational family played pivotal roles in local, state and national movements for abolition, temperance, equal rights, education and social reform. Over the course of time, the Lattimore’s developed connections with many of the early Black abolitionists such the Paul brothers, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglas, Peter Baltimore and suffragists Susan B Anthony and Mary Church Terrell. Their influence extended from New York into New England, to Washington D.C., to Louisiana. Their story begins in the time of the Revolutionary War when slavery was the law of the land and continues into the turbulent fight in the 19th century for freedom, the Underground Railroad and the Civil War. Post-war successive generations are pioneers in education, equal rights, and social reform and are members of what has become known as the Black Aristocracy of the Gilded Age.