Speaker Series: Ohio’s Promised Land w/ Hadley Drodge

Ohio’s Promised Land: Uncomfortable Truths of a Free State

The first state to be formed from the Northwest Territory, Ohio’s earliest years of statehood quickly became a laboratory for how the young country navigated growing tensions and divisions over slavery. Admitted as a free state under the Northwest Ordinance of 1897, Ohio’s role in our 19th-century history cannot be understated. Tucked beneath the narratives of abolition and the Underground Railroad was a history of Black Codes and extralegal aggressions. In June 1846, nearly 400 newly emancipated people left the Roanoke Plantation for a new life in Ohio. The Randolph Freedpeople, as they are known, offer a key insight into the lived experiences of many freedom seekers and freedpeople during the mid- to-late 19th century. Their family ties, perseverance, and belief in the fundamental values of the Declaration of Independence mirror the complexities and contradictions of our collective identity. Join ACHS and Hadley Drodge from the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, a site of the Ohio History Connection, to explore these complexities and the close ties to those who sought freedom in Ashland County.

Hadley Drodge is an Interpretation and Content Specialist at the Ohio History Connection and the Project Coordinator for the upcoming Poindexter Village African American Museum. She was previously a curator at the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio where she created exhibits highlighting undertold histories like the Randolph Freedpeople in Freed Will and African American women’s history in the award-winning Queens of the Heartland. She has been an invited contributor to the Ohio Humanities publication Pathways Magazine and co-taught several courses of a graduate-level exhibits class at Wright State University. The greatest joys of Hadley’s career have come from collaborating with those who worked to preserve their ancestors’ histories. She lives with her family in Huffman’s Historic District in Dayton.