Photograph of the 1737 Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Mass., photographer unknown, ca. 1932.
American Antiquarian Society
185 Salisbury Street
Worcester, MA 01609
United States
As the United States approaches its semiquincentennial, AAS brings together a panel of distinguished Black women scholars to reconsider how the nation defines “revolution” and whose struggles are recognized as revolutionary. Moderated by AAS Council member Deborah Hall, the panelists will examine how Black women have demanded freedom through social, political, and legal activism over the past 250 years, from early petitions and collective resistance to organized movements for justice and liberation.
Panelists Patrice R. Green, curator for African American and African diasporic collections at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America; Kyera Singleton, executive director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters; and Angela T. Tate, chief curator and director of collections at the Museum of African American History, will discuss questions that challenge traditional narratives of revolution. What makes a revolution truly revolutionary? How have Black women’s visions of freedom, rooted in community, care, and collective survival, reshaped the meaning of political change? And why have these revolutionary acts so often been erased, minimized, or reframed to fit an American mythology of perseverance without structural transformation?
Deborah Hall is chief executive officer of YWCA Central MA. She is also the founder of Worcester Black History Project and a member of the Advisory Committee for the Worcester Cultural Plan. Hall has over thirty years of experience working with survivors of domestic violence and addressing the intersection of race, gender, and community violence. She is a social justice advocate, an art lover, and has served in leadership positions for several programs throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Missouri addressing issues of homelessness, violence, and substance abuse. In October 2025, Hall received Worcester's inaugural Black Excellence Award. She was elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society in October 2021 and currently serves on the AAS Council.
Patrice R. Green is the curator for African American and African diasporic collections at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, based at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She acquires published materials and manuscript collections for the library and leads instruction sessions to engage students in primary source research. In 2022, she was selected as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow for Diversity, Inclusion, and Cultural Heritage based at the Rare Book School. Green holds master’s degrees in Public History and Library and Information Science from the University of South Carolina, with training focused on museums and material culture, historic preservation, and archives and preservation management. Her interests include archival representation, knowledge justice, and Black history and culture. Additionally, her work has allowed her to develop and steward collections that center Black life, enhance teaching and learning experiences, and cultivate Black memory.
Kyera Singleton is the executive director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters. She holds a PhD from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in the Department of American Culture. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow for the Slavery, Colonialism, and their Legacies Project at Tufts University. Between 2021-2023, Singleton was an American Democracy Fellow, in the Charles Warren Center, at Harvard University. She has held prestigious academic fellowships from the Beinecke Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Emory University’s James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference, and the American Association of University Women (AAUW). She is one of the co-curators of the Boston Slavery Exhibit in Faneuil Hall. She has been appointed to serve on the City of Boston’s Commemoration Commission and the Special Commission on the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution for Massachusetts. Singleton received a Women of Courage and Conviction Award from the National Council of Negro Women and an Official Citation from the Massachusetts’ State Senate for her work in documenting the history of slavery.
Angela T. Tate is a historian and curator whose practice moves between the archive, the built environment, and Black speculative imagination. As chief curator and director of collections at the Museum of African American History (MAAH), she directs the care and interpretation of the museum’s collections and Revolutionary-era Black heritage sites, develops exhibitions, and provides strategic leadership during a critical period of institutional transition. Her first exhibition at MAAH, Black Voices of the Revolution, opened in July 2025 and uses immersive technologies and material culture to explore the memory and experience of Black patriots, loyalists, and those who fall in between. She also serves as founder of the Center for Black New England Studies (CBNES), an Afrofuturist artistic and research hub advancing new methodologies for studying Black New England. Her scholarship illuminates the worlds Black women built before, during, and after the American Revolution. She is completing her PhD at Northwestern University.
