This month (June 2021), President Biden declared Juneteenth a federal holiday. Celebrated on June 19th, Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. The holiday originates in Galveston, Texas, where enslaved people were finally declared free on June 19, 1865, nearly three years after President Lincoln signed the Read more

HHLT launched the Relearning Highlands History series last fall as part of our commitment to share and amplify stories of and from People of Color who have shaped the landscape and history of the Hudson Highlands. We now want to take the series one step further and bring these important stories “to Read more

This may take you by surprise:  “We’ve left untouched the biggest segregation of all, that overwhelms everything else, and hangs over our entire society, and that is that every metropolitan area in this country is residentially segregated. And all of us accept this as part of the natural environment.” (Richard Rothstein Read more

Being a city slicker, I am always awed when I see vast expanses of green land. Now living in the Hudson Valley, I start my commute in New Windsor and make my daily trek to Manhattan for work. Descending Storm King Mountain, continuing straight through the town of Highland, I Read more

Written by Cassie Ward, Executive Director, Putnam History Museum The Putnam History Museum (PHM) recently launched a new online resource page titled “Black History & Culture in the Hudson Valley, Hudson Highlands, and Putnam County.” The site serves as a landing page for exploring Black history in the Hudson Valley from colonial times to Read more

“Stone walls are built by hands. How else would you bring them to life, other than to learn about and recognize all the people who were part of the stone wall building process?” -Susan Allport, author of Sermons in Stone: The Stone Walls of New England and New York “In any portrait Read more

An Interview with Peter Bunten of the Mid-Hudson Antislavery History Project In our last installment of Relearning Highlands History, we introduced People Not Property and stories of enslavement in the colonial Hudson Valley. We learned that New York had more enslaved people than any place north of Maryland, and was one of the last colonies Read more

An Engaging Interactive Documentary Created by Historic Hudson Valley In American classrooms, slavery is often presented as a southern institution. But slavery was an economic engine for all the American colonies, including those in the North. In fact, slavery persisted in the northern colonies, and in the Hudson Valley in Read more

Chief Daniel Nimham and the Wappinger Fight for Homeland Researched and written by Peter Cutul, NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation [The article below is an abridged version of the full article available here.]The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not purport Read more