Please join us at the Independence Seaport Museum for the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection’s Annual Juneteenth Program. Charles L. Blockson, curator emeritus and founder of the collection, will discuss the Pennsylvania Slave Trade and its influence throughout the nation. Mr. Blockson led the effort to install “The Pennsylvania Slave Trade” historical marker at Penn’s Landing. The marker acknowledges the Delaware River port as a site of the slave trade as early as 1639, and was dedicated in a public ceremony last August.
Charles L. Blockson, 2016 winner of the Philadelphia Award, is a noted author, bibliophile, historian, lecturer, scholar, essayist, and activist. He has spent more than forty years amassing one of the nation’s largest private collections of items relating to Black history and traditions. Mr. Blockson has written several essays and books centered on African American history, especially in Pennsylvania, including The Underground Railroad, Liberty Bell Era: The African-American Story, The President’s House Revisited Behind the Scenes: The Samuel Fraunces Story, and the 1984 feature cover story in the National Geographic on the Underground Railroad.