Ypsilanti as an African-American City with Local Historian Matt Siegfried

When

Wednesday April 20, 2016: 7:00pm to 8:30pm  Add to Calendar /   Add to Google Calendar

Where

Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

For Whom

Grade 6 - Adult

Description

Between the Civil War and around 1920, Ypsilanti was Michigan’s most populous African-American city by percentage. For generations this community, steeped in the struggle against slavery, played a leading role in the entire region’s black life.

We will take a look at the reality of racism in the city and how Ypsilanti’s confident and well-organized black community responded. Learn about the community’s social and political life as we place Ypsilanti in the national context of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow and Michigan's World War II-era Civil Rights Movement with Ypsilanti historian Matt Siegfried.

Matt Siegfried has lived in Ypsilanti since 2001 and is a graduate of Eastern Michigan University with degrees in History and Historic Preservation. Much of his work has been on Ypsilanti’s local history and its connections to broad historical moments. He has focused on Ypsilanti’s rich Native American and African-American history, producing a website which details the development of Ypsi’s Black community.