Stolen: Kidnapping and Enslavement in Antebellum America

Registration not required, but encouraged. Please register for the event here.

Join us for a talk with Dr. Richard Bell, the author of Stolen, a new book that tells the incredible story of five boys whose courage forever changed the fight against slavery in America. Their ordeal shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black-market network of human traffickers who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War. 

Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland and author of the book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award and the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Center for History and Culture and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

ASL interpretation will be available for attendees.

Presented in partnership with The Maryland State Archives and The Maryland Four Centuries Project.