During this virtual conversation, author Debra Bruno will detail her experience unearthing her own family’s connection to an often overlooked and violent part of New York history. When Debra realized that her Dutch ancestors had been some of the most entrenched enslavers during 200 years of slavery in New York, she began the process of telling this story, resulting in a deeply personal and nuanced account of the ways America’s complicated history affects us all. During this program, she will be joined in conversation by Leigh Fludd-Smith of the African American Archive of Columbia County.
Debra Bruno is the author of A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family and a lifelong journalist, based in Washington, D.C. Leigh Fludd-Smith is the Deputy Executive Director of the African American Archive of Columbia County which was founded in 2021 to forge a deeper understanding of the lived historical experience of Black people in the Hudson Valley for the benefit of both their descendants and the world at large.
