A Hudson Valley Reckoning is a deeply personal and historically revealing exploration of Northern slavery. Journalist Debra Bruno uncovers her Dutch ancestors’ role as slaveholders in upstate New York and follows that discovery into a broader investigation of slavery in the Hudson Valley. As she traces her family’s past, Bruno forges a powerful connection with Eleanor C. Mire, a descendant of someone her family enslaved. Together, their stories illuminate the enduring legacy of slavery, racism, and historical erasure in the North, challenging long-held myths about America’s past.
Debra Bruno is a longtime Washington journalist and teacher whose work has covered law, politics, the arts, culture, health, and international issues. She has written for Moment Magazine, Legal Times, Roll Call, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Atlantic’s CityLab. From 2011 to 2014, she lived in Beijing as a freelance writer. After returning to the U.S., Bruno uncovered her Dutch ancestors’ role in enslaving people in New York’s Hudson Valley, a discovery that led her to connect with Eleanor Mire, a descendant of those her family enslaved. The story first appeared in The Washington Post Magazine in 2020 and was later featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and Here and Now. Her book, A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family, with an afterword by Mire, was published by Cornell University Press’s Three Hills imprint in October 2024.
Co-sponsored with Witness to History: Slavery in Guilford. The initiative seeks to uncover the local history of slavery, examine its legacy and share with town residents what it finds.
Copies of A Hudson Valley Reckoning will be available for sale and signing courtesy of Breakwater Books.
This program is free and open to all.
Please register.