Chesapeake Forum - Writing about Harriet Tubman’s Native Land - Is it Unchanged? with Phillip Hesser, Ph.D.

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Chesapeake Forum

Phillip Hesser

The Maryland Park Service describes the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, a driving route “meandering through 125 miles of countryside and shoreline in Dorchester and Caroline Counties” (according to the Byway website), as weaving through “a rare landscape, virtually unaltered for more than a century.” Join Phil Hesser, co-author of The Old Home Is Not There, for on a sweep through Dorchester as he looks for continuity and change. The landscape has undergone changes over that time – the product of the technologies of farming, systems for transportation, and loss of marsh and coast to rising sea level and surging tides. Nonetheless, it is possible to see the landscape as virtually unchanged by applying historical imagination to scenes of continuity in the landscape. Focusing on a few key locations in Harriet Tubman’s Dorchester County native land, Phil Hesser, co-author (with Charlie Ewers) of Harriet Tubman’s Eastern Shore – The Old Home Is Not There, will show how those locations can be seen to be “virtually unchanged,” an imagined portal into Harriet Tubman’s time. Choose Between ZOOM Class or Recorded, Single Session, Thurs Oct 7 from 1-2:30 pm $10.

Following a career in human rights and education in Africa and the United States, Phillip Hesser has taught at Salisbury University and Wor-Wic Community College and spends his time exploring the Delmarva past. He is the author of "What a River Says: Exploring the Blackwater River and Refuge" (Cambridge, MD: Friends of Blackwater, 2014) and "Harriet Tubman’s Eastern Shore: The Old Home Is Not There" (Columbia, SC: History Press, 2021). To register for this class or to find the list of Fall classes visit the website: Writing about Harriet Tubman’s Native Land – Is it Unchanged? – Chesapeake Forum