The cover is approved for the new Rutgers U. book on “Slavery’s Descendants.” Book itself will be out in May. My contribution is an article on the experiences of a slave named Reuben Shipley who was brought to Oregon from Missouri by one of my ancestors in 1853.
Immaculate conception — a political version of it — is how modern West Coast residents envision slavery’s role in the earliest foundations of California, Oregon and Washington.
Those of you who have read my new book, “The Troubled Life of Peter Burnett,” will recall the chapter describing the drowning of two young boys of the Applegate family in the Columbia River in 1843.