About

Welcome to the exhibit, “Local Histories and Legacies of Slavery in Berks County”, in which we explore the history and impact of racial slavery in Berks county, and the ways that the stories found here reiterate themselves across time and space, as well as how a pro-slavery master narrative and imagination pushed these histories down and kept the legacy of racial slavery alive. We analyze primary sources from the area, including local news publications, journal and diary entries from the eighteenth-century pastor and known member of the Berks County community, Henry M. Muhlenberg, as well as official court documents and trial transcripts.

This exhibit is organized by topic, examining white attitudes towards slavery in the area first, before magnifying in on the example of the Muhlenberg family's connection to slavery and the trial of Alice Clifton, an enslaved black girl impregnated by an in-law to the Muhlenbergs, and who was convicted of infanticide after having had a miscarriage. Then, we will discuss the ways in which this example connects to slavery as a national institution through persistently reiterated narratives, and commentate on the continued legacies of these instances into the present through the persistent suppression of these histories by the federal government in 2026.

Sourcing mainly from the Trappe Historical Society for primary sources, as well as other secondary sources from varying peer-reviewed journals, we analyze and better contextualize both pro-slavery and abolitionist expressions of ideology within their historical contexts, helping to build a fuller picture on a family and a county with a complex relationship to a controversial system, especially during a time of considerable change in perception of ideas like freedom and independence during and after the Revolutionary War.