The Leelanau Historical Society has announced the first lecture in our lineup of programming in commemoration of this year’s 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Gregory Nobles will present his lecture “Whose American Revolution Was It—And Whose Is It Now?” on May 12 at 7 p.m. at the Old Art Building.
The American Revolution was not just a two-sided struggle between Great Britain and British-American colonists, but a conflict that engaged people of all sorts in the eastern half of North America — including what is now Leelanau County. The war divided the American colonists themselves, even people of similar class and regional identities, and it also led many people of color — Indigenous people and free and enslaved Blacks — to take sides (and even to change sides at times). This presentation invites us to think about the Revolution as a complex continental event, to consider what it meant to different people at the time, and to ask what it still means to the American people now — and who gets to determine that in this semiquincentennial year.
