Join us as we welcome Dr. Kerima Lewis who will lecture on the topic of New England slavery and will also discuss slavery in Weymouth including the persons who were enslaved by Rev. Smith, the father of Abigail Adams. 

Dr. Kerima Lewis teaches history at Massasoit Community College and Emerson College in Massachusetts. Having worked in the fields of social work and law before becoming a historian, she holds a B.A. degree from Northwestern University, a M.S.W. degree from the Hunter College School of Social Work, a Juris Doctor degree from New York University School of Law, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr.  Lewis wrote her dissertation on the history of slave resistance in colonial New England. Her article “Captives on the Move: Tracing the Transatlantic Movements of Africans from the West Indies to Colonial New England,” was published in the Historical Journal of Massachusetts (Summer 2016). Dr. Lewis was a Massachusetts Historical Society Fellow in 2009 and she began working on her book project with a Fellowship from the American Council for Learned Societies Fellowship in 2020-2021. She recently founded the Lorenzo Johnston Greene Institute for the Study of Slavery in New England. As a historian in the field of slavery, Dr. Lewis has been asked to present on this topic within New England as well as across the U.S. the Caribbean and West Africa.

This program is supported by a grant from the Weymouth Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.