While early European and American naturalists are credited with making great discoveries about the natural world, enslaved Africans and African Americans also made significant contributions to natural history but have otherwise been removed from the canon. Recently scholars have begun to document individual stories of enslaved people contributing to our early understanding of natural history. […]
Each of the stories in this exhibit took place in the era of America’s active expansion of slavery, but they are adjacent to each other in both time and space. The stories of York, Black Walden, and Harriet Tubman are spatialized below. Use the map to explore where these three stories are positioned in relation […]
York was an enslaved man that was crucial to the Lewis and Clark expedition. He was born into slavery by the Clark family in Caroline County, Virginia, and then assigned to William Clark at a very young age. In his 30’s he was selected to participate in Lewis and Clark’s expedition to the Pacific Ocean. […]
Although York had no say in the decision, at 30-something years old he was chosen to accompany the “Corps of Discovery” on their expedition from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark conferred at length about who would accompany them on their expedition. They chose interpreters, soldiers, and French oarsmen who […]
The Lewis and Clark expedition described at least 178 plants and 122 animals. While no plants or animals bear York’s name, like the Clark’s nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) or the Lewis woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis), it is clear that he helped identify many of the species that were documented along the way. On March 7, 1806, Lewis […]
An African American woman who conducted dozens of successful rescues—estimates range from 13 to 19 separate missions— over 11 years that brought around 70 enslaved people to freedom during the antebellum era, Harriet Tubman was an expert rescuer. Most of Tubman’s missions started by aiding runaways who were enslaved in rural Maryland and helping them […]
Tubman became deeply acquainted with two of the most significant components to Maryland’s natural environment, which was water and forests. Tubman was a naturalist, an expert of nature, science, geography, and the physical environment, in several ways. She utilized her knowledge of the physical environment and different components of the natural world to her advantage […]
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