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According to the Association of African American Museums (AAAM), there are more than 200 African American history and cultural museums—or other sites with substantial African American collections such as libraries and archives—across the U.S. Many of these museums had their start shortly after the height of the Civil Rights Movement, with a surge in establishments in the 1970s. Black museums serve to decenter White stories of America and refocus on Black experiences. While geographers have studied an array of memory, heritage, and tourism sites, museums remain understudied and under-theorized. Building upon the subfields of Museum geographies—particularly by considering the concept of museums as theatres of pain—and Black geographies, our research examines the ways these museums are integral to the relationships between Black placemaking and the tourism landscape, which remains steeped in anti-Black racism. Using museum exhibit documentation, semi-structured interviews of museum staff, and content analysis of online travel reviews (primarily TripAdvisor and Google Reviews), this paper analyzes two case studies: The National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio, and The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Through our two case studies, we show how Black museums enact curatorial practices of commemorative geographies and create redemptive spaces that cultivate not only a homeplace for visitors, particularly for Black Americans and people of the African diaspora but also serve as sites of belonging and joy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second of three complementary articles collected as 'Robinson Reflections', 'Abolition and Evangelicalism' explores the background of Lydia Robinson's father, the Anglican divine and poet, the Reverend Thomas Gisborne. His prominence in early nineteenth-century Derbyshire and Staffordshire society is demonstrated and his contribution to the campaign to end slavery, through his core membership of the Clapham Sect, is presented. His earlier days at St John's College, Cambridge, brought him and other leading Evangelicals (including William Wilberforce and Henry Thornton) into contact with the young Reverend Patrick Brontë. With these relationships in mind, the article connects the Clapham Sect to Thorp Green Hall, setting in context the reactions of the Brontës to the crisis of 1845, and explaining why Lydia's connections were so eager to distance her from Branwell after the unmasking of their alleged affair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the cultural memory of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain. It examines official government responses and considers how these were replicated in popular culture, drawing on the film Amazing Grace. The study highlights the rhetoric employed to distance the past of the transatlantic slave trade from the present, thereby contributing to a process of historical erasure rather than tackling the lingering social and political affects of a traumatic past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end of the American War of Independence in 1783 coincided with two very different, but closely related initiatives: the settlement of New South Wales and the fight against the slave trade. In both, James Ramsay, a naval surgeon, played a decisive role. James Ramsay was born on 25 July 1733 at Fraserburgh on the Aberdeenshire coast. After a grammar school education, he was apprenticed to a Dr Findlay, surgeon and physician in Fraserburgh. Through his proficiency in Latin, he obtained a small bursary which enabled him to enter King's College in the University of Aberdeen and brought Ramsay under the influence of Dr Thomas Reid, the professor of moral philosophy, who exercised a profound influence on Ramsay's thinking (Vol 17, pp 632-3). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]