Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/17/2026
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location
Campus Martius Museum
False Promises: The Struggle for Black Voting Rights in 1800’s Ohio
In False Promises, the fight for Black voting rights in Ohio comes alive through narratives of men of color who defied the state’s nineteenth-century restrictions on suffrage. Though ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment ostensibly extended the franchise, state election laws still forced men of color into a perilous struggle for full citizenship. Ric S. Sheffield depicts their courage and determination, revealing their humanity through stories of sacrifice, resistance, and hope. Weaving together historical records with imaginative reconstructions of dialogue, setting, and descriptive elements beyond the dusty courthouse pages, these stories recount the lived experiences of those who risked everything to exercise their right to vote.
Ric S. Sheffield, author of We Got By: A Black Family’s Journey in the Heartland and False Promises: The Struggle for Black Voting Rights in 1800s Ohio, has researched, taught, written, and lectured extensively about rural diversity in general, and the Black experience in small town America in particular. As co-director (with Prof. Howard Sacks, Kenyon College) of the award-winning Community Within: Black Experience in Knox County, Ohio project and co-director (with Prof. Brooke Bryan, Antioch College) of the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s (GLCA) Oral History in the Liberal Arts (OHLA) program, he has designed and executed projects intended to explore minority communities in small town America. He also offers workshops on exploring diversity in rural geographies and cultural contexts.
This event is sponsored by the Washington County Public Library and is FREE and open to the public. This is also available as a livestream and recording on our YouTube channel: @CampusMartiusMuseum