The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier

Winner of the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Forest History Society Book Award

The Black Woods chronicles the history of Black pioneers in New York’s northern wilderness. From the late 1840s to the 1860s, they migrated to the Adirondacks to build the farms that helped them meet a ＄250 property requirement imposed on Black New York voters in 1821.

Abolitionist Gerrit Smith gifted 120,000 acres to 3,000 landless Black New Yorkers, with the support of Frederick Douglass, John Brown and other abolitionists. His prescient plan enacted affirmative action and distributive justice. But when most of his grantees did not move north, Smith’s interest cooled. He would not visit Timbuctoo, Freemen’s Home, or Blacksville. The settlers were on their own.

In The Black Woods, Godine revives this history with stirring stories of frontier life and racial justice. She puts the vote-seeking Black pioneers at the heart of the Adirondack narrative. At long last, their shaping role has been reclaimed.

From Saratoga Springs, New York, independent scholar Amy Godine has been writing and speaking about ethnic, migratory, and Black Adirondack history for more than three decades. Exhibits she has curated include Dreaming of Timbuctoo at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in North Elba, New York.