In reckoning with the racial history of Amherst College, we are proud to have the opportunity to partner with the following individuals and organizations:
Ancestral Bridges
Ancestral Bridges is an Amherst-based 501(c)(3) organization that “supports and builds programs that celebrate BIPOC arts, history, and culture in western Massachusetts.” Founded by Anika Bridges Lopes in 2022, some of the activities the organization supports include “telling the stories of local ancestors through interactive history walks, art exhibits, and music events; elevating opportunity and building a more equitable future for all area BIPOC by educating about wealth generation and developing internships, programs, and workshops for BIPOC youth and families; and enabling local BIPOC wealth generation by receiving gifts, grants, and other resources to benefit BIPOC futures.” During academic year 2023-2024, Frost Library was home to an exhibition put together by Ancestral Bridges that featured photos, artifacts, and rare documents of Black and Afro-Indigenous people who lived in Amherst during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Fore more information, visit https://ancestral-bridges.org/
Nicka Sewell-Smith
Nicka Sewell-Smith is a professional genealogist, longtime host of the genealogical research show Black ProGen Live, and founder of the Trask 250 project. In fall of 2021, she came to Amherst College to visit with students and Archives & Special Collections, and gave an in-person talk about the history of Amherst and slavery as pertains to college co-founder and trustee, Israel Elliott Trask. Her research into the 250 people Trask is known to have enslaved in Mississippi and Louisiana in the early 1800s, and whose labors provided him with great wealth, has led her to identify nearly 10,000 individuals whose ancestry can be traced to those 250 people Trask enslaved; she herself is one of them. For more information, visit https://www.whoisnickasmith.com/
Watch the presentation, “Held in the Balance: The Trask 250” (Oct. 4, 2021)