Past Programs

Past Programs

Dutch New York Histories

Thursday August 3, 2017 @ 6:30pm Dutch rule in New Amsterdam and New Netherland (1609-1664) was short in comparison to other colonial empires, but it has had a…

Past Programs

Atlantic Slaveries: Native American and African Slavery in New England and the Caribbean

Thursday, April 6, 2017 @ 12pm Linford D. Fisher, Associate Professor of History, Brown University Atlantic Slaveries: Native American and African Slavery in New England and the Caribbean…

Past Programs

Illegal Trade in Human Flesh: Illicit Slave Trading in the Atlantic World, 1833-1867

Thursday, March 9, 2017 @ 12pm Lewis Eliot, PhD Candidate, University of South Carolina. Illegal Trade in Human Flesh: Illicit Slave Trading in the Atlantic World, 1833-1867 Abolition in…

Past Programs

Black Music Month in Argentina and Uruguay

Wednesday, June 14, 2017 @ 6:30pm In celebration of Black Music Month, the Lapidus Center presented the documentary film Tango Negro: The African Roots of Tango. Directed by…

Past Programs

Afro-Iberians in the Spanish Empire, 1500s and 1600s

Thursday, February 23, 2017 @12pm Leo Garofalo, Associate Professor of History, Connecticut College. Afro-Iberians as Black European Sailors, Soldiers, Travelers, and Traders in the Spanish Empire, 1500s and…

Past Programs

The Transatlantic Muslim Diaspora to Latin America in the Nineteenth Century

Enjoy exciting talks on works in progress on the slave trade, slavery and anti-slavery in the Atlantic World. January 26, 2017 – 12pm Philip Misevich, PhD. Assistant Professor…

Past Programs

From Timbuktu to Timbuctoo: A Workshop for Teachers

January 30, 2017 – 9:00am-12:00pm Timbuktu, Mali: A famous center of Islamic learning from the 13th to the 17th century. Timbuctoo, New Jersey: A village founded in 1826…

Past Programs

Black Colonists: The African History of the Early Spanish Caribbean

Monday April 24, 2017 @ 6:30pm The first known transatlantic slaving voyages sailing directly from Africa brought captives to the Spanish Caribbean as early as the 1520s; by the…

Past Programs

Slavery and Globalization in Arabia

Thursday, March 30, 2017 @ 6:30pm How the new taste for food (dates) and fashion (pearls) in the West led to the enslavement of East Africans in…

Past Programs

Enslaved Women and the Ethical Practice of History

Women’s History Month Program Tuesday, March 7, 2017 @ 6:30pm In the 18th century, Bridgetown, Barbados, was heavily populated by both enslaved and free women. Marisa J. Fuentes,…

The Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery—funded by a generous $2.5 million gift from Ruth and Sid Lapidus matched by The New York Public Library—is the only facility of its kind based in a public research library.

The initial gift also included 400 rare items of printed material, making the Schomburg Center home to one of the world’s premier collections of slavery material. Sid Lapidus continues to donate items as he acquires them.

The Center's mission is to generate and disseminate scholarly knowledge on the slave trade, slavery, and anti-slavery pertaining to the Atlantic World. The Center supports the work of researchers with long-term and short-term fellowships. Given the centrality of Atlantic slavery to the making of the modern world, the Lapidus fellowships ensure that slavery studies are a cornerstone of the Schomburg Center’s broader research community and provide a counterbalance to the contemporary direction of scholarship in African American and African Diaspora studies.

To raise awareness and historical literacy, the Lapidus Center engages the public with a variety of programs, an annual nonfiction prize, exhibitions, conferences, and partnerships with local, national, and international institutions.