American Antiquarian Society
185 Salisbury Street
Worcester, MA 01609
United States
Join us virtually or in person to hear Peter H. Wood reflect on his seminal work, Black Majority. First published in 1974, Black Majority marked a breakthrough in our understanding of early American history. This landmark book chronicles the crucial formative years of North America’s wealthiest and most tormented British colony. It explores how West African familiarity with rice determined the Lowcountry economy and how a skilled but enslaved labor force formed its own distinctive language and culture. While African American history often focuses on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Black Majority underscores the significant role early African arrivals played in shaping the direction of American history.
The Robert C. Baron Lecture invites a distinguished AAS member who has written a seminal work of history to reflect on the book’s impact on scholarship and society in the years since its appearance. The lecture was endowed to honor Robert C. Baron, founder and president of Fulcrum Publishing and chairman of the AAS council from 1993 to 2003.
Peter H. Wood was born in St. Louis in 1943 and studied early American history at Harvard University and Oxford University. From 1975 to 2007 he taught at Duke University. His pioneering 1974 book on enslavement in the colonial era, Black Majority: Race, Rice, and Rebellion in South Carolina, 1670-1740, appeared last year in an expanded fiftieth-anniversary edition. Wood, an AAS member since 1979, has written articles on topics ranging from ancient dugout canoes to why Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon.
Wood and his wife, historian Elizabeth Fenn, live in Longmont, Colorado, where he continues to write and grow gourds.