Watch the program video here:

Dr. Frances Jones-Sneed will give a lecture on “Being Black and Free: Before and after the Emancipation Proclamation in Berkshire County, Massachusetts” in connection with the Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation exhibition. 

The lecture will begin at 6; the galleries will remain open until 6 p.m. for those who want to visit the exhibition prior to the talk. The event will take place in the auditorium of Lawrence Hall, the building which houses WCMA. Visitors can enter through the main museum door and will need to take stairs or an elevator one flight down. There is limited parking directly outside the museum on Lawrence Hall Drive but ample parking nearby on public streets and in public lots. Please refer to the map on our Visit page for other parking options.

Esteemed emeritus professor of history at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA), Jones-Sneed has dedicated her life and research to making African American history visible and readily available to the public. In particular, she is interested in sharing the stories of individuals in Massachusetts. 

Frances Jones-Sneed, Ph.D. is an emeritus professor of history at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) in North Adams, Massachusetts. She has taught and researched local history for over thirty years. She has directed three National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants on African American Biography.  She spearheaded a national conference on African American Biography and is co-director of the Upper Housatonic African American Heritage Trail. She was an NEH Fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University and is currently working on a monograph about W.E.B. Du Bois and editing the autobiography of the Rev. Samuel Harrison a nineteenth-century African American minister from Pittsfield, Massachusetts.