A House Divided: Tri-Racial Tensions at Bethabra

Artifacts recovered from the Bethabra historic site in Forsyth County offers a glimpse into the relationships between the village's Moravian founders, their Cherokee neighbors and enslaved Africans who toiled in the fields and workshops. Dr. Andrew Gurstelle, director of the Museum of Anthropology at Wake Forest University, will explore this dynamic at the Asheboro Public Library. Gurstelle, whose research focuses on the rise of kingdoms and empires in West Africa, the early slave trade and Indian Removal policies in the 19th century U.S., will explore how the Moravian colonization of the area in the mid-1700s sheds light on the impact of the Cherokee removal and African-American emancipation in the 18th century.