HNY’s Community Conversations are still going strong. In the months ahead, we’ll continue bringing these facilitated discussions to trusted partner sites across the state, inviting New Yorkers to reflect, listen, and reason with one another across differences. These gatherings emphasize the everyday work of democracy.
Join us this Saturday to talk through how families navigate political division—past and present. At the center of the discussion is an 1852 exchange between Rebecca A. [Fitzhugh] Backus, a member of a Maryland family of planter-enslavers, and her brother-in-law Gerrit Smith, a wealthy New York abolitionist. Their correspondence offers a window into how slavery and the sectional crisis strained family ties and forced moral reckoning. Participants will use this historic dialogue to explore enduring tensions between democratic ideals, republican institutions and lived reality.
Together, we’ll ask: How do we stay in conversation across lines of deep disagreement? What happens when personal relationships and political convictions collide? And how can the struggles of the past inform the civic habits we need today?
This program was originally part of A New Agora for New York: Museums as Spaces for Democracy, a humanities discussion initiative organized by the Museum Association of New York and supported by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). In early April, that NEH funding was canceled by the Department of Education.
At a time when many communities are losing access to public dialogue, we are deeply grateful to an anonymous donor to GCV&M for stepping in. Their support ensures this conversation will go on as planned—offering residents of the Genesee Valley and the Finger Lakes a space to engage, reflect, and practice the habits of democracy.
About Genessee Country Village and Museum
GCV&M is the largest living history museum in New York State and the third-largest in the nation. Chartered by the NYS Board of Regents, it offers immersive experiences across 68 historic buildings, 20,000 artifacts, working farms, gardens, and a vast natural landscape.