July 2, 2024
History Praxis Lab Students Meet with Randolph Freedpeople Descendants
In 1846, Mercer County, Ohio, residents and officials violently prevented 383 formerly enslaved people from the Randolph plantation, who migrated to Ohio from Virginia, from settling on land they had purchased in advance. Descendants are litigating to get their land back. In early June, the History Praxis Lab hosted a Randolph Freedpeople descendant and whose talk was filmed for an upcoming documentary.
On a research trip to northwest Ohio the Praxis Lab students met with mayors, archivists, local history groups, and Indigenous and African American descendant communities, including the Randolph group. Descendants traveled from as far away as Georgia to meet with Lab students and show them sites and materials relating to Miami Nation reserve lands and African American homesteads in Celina and Shelby Ohio. Find out more about the Randolph group in a new article in The Columbus Dispatch: https://tinyurl.com/6wa4fnef
In the History Praxis Lab, students learn the techniques of historical research and conduct supervised research on Native American and African American civic engagement, citizenship, voting, and civil rights activism 1780-1960. Students work in person with experts on Native American and African American studies, including Professors John Bickers (Miami Tribe of Oklahoma), Margaret Newell, Deondre Smiles (Leech Lake Ojibwe), and Noël Voltz. (Find out more about the History Praxis Lab: https://u.osu.edu/historypraxislab)
