About the Presenter
Sherri Burr is the Dickason Chair and Regents Professor of Law Emerita at the University of New Mexico School of Law. Her 27th book, Complicated Lives: Free Blacks in Virginia, 1619-1865 (Carolina Academic Press, 2019), was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History. She earned her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, her M.P.A. from Princeton University, and J.D. from Yale Law School. In 2015, she became a fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello to work on Complicated Lives. At Mount Vernon, she will test the question, “How harmful was slavery to individuals and successive generations of their families?” She plans to compare the post-freedom economic lives of enslaved persons at Mount Vernon who were owned by George Washington to those who belonged to the Custis Dower Estate. President Washington designated his bondsmen to receive freedom in his will after the death of his wife, who chose to free them during her lifetime . The Custis Dower Estate bondsmen, by contrast, did not receive freedom until January 1, 1863, or after the Civil War.
Recipient of the Black Women United for Action Fellowship