- Today, we are pleased to introduce Christy Clark-Pujara as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's History Sandwiched In lecture series. The opinions expressed today are those of the presenter, and are not necessarily those of the Wisconsin Historical Society or the museum's employees. Christy Clark-Pujara is an associate professor of history in the department of Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on the experiences of black people in British and French North America in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. She is particularly interested in retrieving the hidden and unexplored histories of African Americans in the areas that historians have not sufficiently examined, small towns and cities in the North and Midwest. Her first book, "Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island," was printed by NYU Press in 2016. In addition to her scholarly research, she serves as a public historian, writing editorials and participating in interviews for podcasts for a variety of media including NPR, Time, History News Network, Ben Franklin's World, The Way of Improvement, and Teaching Tolerance. Here today to discuss the history of black suffrage in Wisconsin, please join me in welcoming Christy Clark-Pujara.  [audience applauds]   - Good afternoon, and thank you all for coming and braving the rain. I'd like to thank Katie for reaching out for me to speak today. And the Wisconsin Historical Museum for hosting these events, so thank you, I appreciate it. I thought today was particularly fitting, as an election day, to be talking about suffrage in the state of Wisconsin. First, I'm gonna begin with a little bit of background. I'm not just gonna jump into suffrage, the suffrage debates that really began in earnest in 1846. I wanna tell a little bit of backstory about the experiences of black people in what we now refer to as Wisconsin, and how they came to be in this place. The story of black people and black suffrage in Wisconsin is recent history and plays out amidst European invasion, colonization, and the removal of indigenous populations that have inhabited this region for hundreds and thousands of years. One of the things I have appreciated most about my new project on black people in Wisconsin is the opportunity to study indigenous history. To learn about the Ho-Chunk, the Dakota, the Meskwaki, and the Ojibwa, and other indigenous people that have called this place home and continue to call this place home. Native people and their experiences are central to understanding the history of African Americans in this place and the state as a whole. Black people have been in what we refer to as the Midwest. I'm sorry, I meant to have this up ahead of time, but I just wanna recenter us for a minute. We're used to thinking that we know what North America looks like, but this is what North America looked like before European colonization and invasion. And I think it's important for us to recognize that the places that we think we know looked very different, and that history doesn't begin with European colonization and invasion. That there was a history to those places before white people were ever there. Black people have been in what we refer to as the Midwest since the French colonial period. The first black people came into the region in the 1720s with French fur traders. Some were free, but most lived in bondage. Free and enslaved people of African descent and Native descent were instrumental in the Midwestern transformation from mission centers and fur trading posts to grain production. By 1732, enslaved people made up a quarter of the population. And by 1752, 446 enslaved black people lived in the region, and 41% of white heads of households owned a person. Like in the North, slave ownership in the Midwest was more widespread than it ever was in the South. Let me take a minute to explain. In the North, you would often get 40-42% of white heads of households owning people. They usually owned one or two. In the South, you had about 24% of the population holding slaves, and