“With Liberty and Justice For All”: The Black Pioneers Who Upheld the Values of the American Revolution in Frontier Michigan and Manistee” 

Anna-Lisa Cox, is an award-winning historian of nineteenth century America with a special focus on race relations on the frontier and rural Michigan. Dr. Cox's book "The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America's Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality" was honored by Smithsonian Magazine as one of the best history books of 2018. Dr. Cox will give us some insight into the history of African Americans here in our own region of northern Michigan. As we near the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, focusing on the founders of this nation and the state of Michigan, in all of their diversity, is so crucial.