Conversations in African American History and Culture: Joseph Tucker Edmonds

Event Details

In 2024, Freetown Village continues its monthly conversations with historians, researchers and educators to discuss topics related to Indiana’s Black heritage.

May’s program will feature Dr. Joseph L. Tucker Edmonds, who presents “Race and Religion in the Heartland: African Americans, Contested Frontiers and the Black Church in Indiana.”

Tucker Edmonds is associate professor of Africana studies and religious studies at Indiana University Indianapolis and associate director of the university’s Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. His presentation will explore the role that Black religious institutions, particularly the Black church, played in disrupting the idea of Indiana as solely a frontier for whiteness and racial exclusion, and how the Black church and other Black religious institutions imagined and created new frontiers for Black belonging, resistance and agency. Tucker Edmonds’s talk will explore the founding moments of critical Black religious institutions in the 19th century and their methods of challenging white supremacy and engaging Black communities on and in between Sundays throughout the 20th century.

The event, which includes a question-and-answer session, will be presented both in person and online via Zoom. Registration is required for both in-person and online attendance. Click on the RSVP link above to register for both the in-person and online options.

For more information, visit Freetown Village’s website at www.freetown.org, email info@freetownvillage.org or call 317.631.1870.

This program received support from an INcommon Grant through Indiana Humanities and the Indianapolis Foundation, a CICF affiliate. Additional sponsors include Indiana Landmarks’ Black Heritage Preservation Program, IUPUI’s Africana Studies program and the Association of the Study of African American Life and History’s Joseph Taylor branch.