The Material Elements of Enslaved People’s Mobility: The Way to Freedom

press release: Presented by Christy Hyman, assistant professor of human geography at Mississippi State University, this discussion will explore the intersections of the social, political, and economic costs of enslaved freedom seekers’ escape into the Great Dismal Swamp wilderness.

This talk is presented by the Everyone’s Earth: Conversations on Race and Environment lecture series, which showcases and promotes voices of color, highlighting the issues at the intersection of diversity and environmental justice. 

For enslaved freedom seekers near the Great Dismal Swamp, there were numerous environmental convergences that arose in areas that could have been potential sites of refuge and reconnaissance. The intersections of these paths in terms of social, political, and economic costs of escape into the wilderness is the subject of this talk. Interspecies encounters transformed into interspecies cooperation for those liberation seekers who developed a committed yearning to survive. It was The Way to Freedom.

The Way is a metaphor for the mysteries, possibilities, yearnings, and receiving of surviving turbulent terrain in search of freedom. Attendees of this talk will receive a multilayered discussion of historical Black geographies, the natural world past and present, and contemporary issues of ecological sustainability as it pertains to these elements.