At Home in the Great Northern Wilderness: African Americans and Freedom's Ecology in the Adirondacks, 1846-1859

摘要: In the fall of 1846, first 3,000 African American settlers set foot on their 40-acre plots in Great Northern Wilderness New York State, a place we now call "forever wild" wilderness Adirondack State Park. These black were initial wave social experiment meant to destroy both slavery and, more generally, racism throughout entire United States through redemptive practice utopian agrarianism. The understood that nature and culture, society, thickly, dialectically intertwined. And they weren't alone: efforts seeded by white abolitionist, Gerrit Smith; fertilized socialist communes covered Northeast 1840s; nurtured abolitionists, white. To environmental history, I add two threads less frequently seen: history an intellectual radical politics. Following these has led me beyond disciplinary confines into larger debates about cultural politics wilderness. this article argue critical paradigm currently reigning historical scholarship obscured nuanced, sometimes visions natural world. Instead ironic, deconstructed notion troubling wilderness, suggest another heuristic, ecology freedom, which highlights past contingency hope, can furthermore help guide our present efforts, scholastic activist, find honorable, just way living earth.