Unhired Hands - 18th Century Northern Slavery

This event is in honor of Black History Month.

Unhired Hands kicks-off the “America 250: The Revolutionary Spirit Lecture Series”, co-sponsored by the Friends of the Weston Public Library, The Weston History & Culture Center and the League of Women Voters of Weston, with financial support by the Weston America 250 Committee.

Unhired Hands, presented by award-winning poet, actor, playwright David Mills, will explore the history of slavery in the North during the 18th century, through storytelling and poetry.

The Declaration of Independence was signed 250 years ago, declaring, “all men are created equal”, however that was not the case for many of the men and women of African and Indigenous descent in 1776.

Unhired Hands, presented by David Mills, will explore the history of slavery in the North during the 18th century, interweaving poems with remarkable stories.

Mills will introduce the audience to Millie Tunnell, who served George Washington and would become the oldest living woman in Queens, Onesimus, an African man enslaved by Puritan preacher Cotton Mather who would go on to help save the Massachusetts colony from smallpox, and Victoria Earle Matthews, an enslaved woman who became a celebrated writer and leader in the settlement movement.

Unhired Hands will remind us that this nation is built on the labor of remarkable people. Mills’ poems "travel from the plantations of the South to historic cemeteries of Queens," says Maple Grove Cemetery Historian Carl Ballenas, “unearthing slavery’s erasures with lyrical power.”

About the Presenter: Davis Mills’ most recent books are Unhired Hands and How the Earth Answers, both on slavery in the North, (Massachusetts, Queens and the Bronx, specifically). Mills holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and an MA from New York University—both in creative writing—as well as a B.A. (cum laude) from Yale University. He’s published four previous poetry collections: Boneyarn, The Sudden Country, The Dream Detective, and After Mistic. He served as the Bronx County Historical Society Poet-in-Residence and Boneyarn won the North American Book Award. He is currently on a fellowship at the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library.