The power of names, the weight of history, the meaning of being found
The NAACP Berkshire County Branch invites the community to a special February program exploring history, memory, and the search for family on Wednesday, February 4, 2026, at 6 pm via Zoom
We will host a virtual conversation featuring Dr. Kendra Taira Field, Chief Historian of the 10 Million Names Project, and Lisa Shepperson, the first publicly identified living descendant of Elizabeth Freeman. The discussion will be moderated by branch executive committee member Dr. Frances Jones Sneed.
The 10 Million Names Project is a collaborative project dedicated to recovering the names of the estimated 10 million people of African descent who were enslaved between the 1500s and 1865 on the land that became the United States.
“Names are not footnotes, they are lives,” says Dr. Frances Jones Sneed. “This conversation brings together rigorous historical scholarship and the lived experience of descendants.”
| About Our Guests
Dr. Kendra Taira Field is the Gerald R. Gill Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Public History at Tufts University and a 2025–26 Hutchins Fellow at Harvard University. She is the author of Growing Up with the Country (Yale, 2018) and is currently writing The Stories We Tell (W.W. Norton), a history of African American genealogy and storytelling and winner of a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant. A public historian, Field is chief historian of the 10 Million Names Project and has advised major documentaries on African American history.
Lisa Shepperson is the first publicly identified living descendant of Elizabeth Freeman, the formerly enslaved woman whose 1781 freedom suit helped end slavery in Massachusetts. A sixth great-granddaughter of Freeman, Shepperson’s lineage was uncovered through American Ancestors’ 10 Million Names initiative. A certified nursing assistant based in Richmond, Virginia, she traveled to the Berkshires in 2024 to visit sites connected to Freeman’s life, including her grave in Stockbridge. Shepperson has spoken about her pride in her ancestor’s legacy and her commitment to preserving Elizabeth Freeman’s history and impact. |
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