University of New Orleans history professor Andrea Mosterman (center) and other panelists discuss the art exhibit, “The Price of Half-Freedom.”
University of New Orleans history professor Andrea Mosterman’s book about slavery and resistance in Dutch New York serves as the basis for an art exhibit at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center located on the campus of Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York City.
The exhibition by artist Jean-Marc Superville Sovak is based on research in Mosterman’s book Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York. Mosterman, along with Sovak, participated in a roundtable discussion at the art center in September.
"The Price of Half-Freedom" tells the story of eight enslaved Black men who confessed to the murder of another man enslaved by the Dutch West India Company in New Amsterdam, now New York City. The men stood willing to be collectively accused of a crime that carried the death sentence, because they knew that they stood a better chance of survival by standing together, guilty in solidarity, rather than individually in innocence.
