Everyone’s Earth: Conversations on Race and Environment

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

Presented by Christy Hyman, assistant professor of human geography at Mississippi State University

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.

Supporting Partners

Nelson Institute Office of Environmental Justice
Nelson Institute Community Environmental Scholars Program
Nelson Institute Center for Culture, History, and Environment
Department of African American Studies
Department of Geography
Department of Geoscience
Center for Humanities

Photo by Chastity Hyman