CAZENOVIA — On Nov. 7 at 6 p.m., the Cazenovia Public Library (CPL) will welcome author Amy Godine to the Betsy Kennedy Community Room to discuss her debut book, “The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier.”

Published by Cornell University Press in November 2023, the book chronicles the history of Black pioneers who migrated to New York’s northern wilderness from the late 1840s into the 1860s.

The New York State Constitution of 1821 required Black voters to own at least $250 worth of property to vote.

Gerrit Smith, an abolitionist and heir to an immense land fortune, came up with a plan to help Black men meet the property requirement.

Smith, who was from Peterboro, decided to give away 120,000 acres of land to 3,000 free black families, encouraging them to build lives as farmers in the Adirondacks.

His plan had the support of influential leaders such as Frederick Douglass. Antislavery reformer John Brown was such an advocate that he moved his family to Timbuctoo, a new Black Adirondack settlement in the woods, in 1849.

“Smith’s plan was prescient, anticipating Black suffrage reform, affirmative action, environmental distributive justice, and community-based racial equity more than a century before these were points of public policy,” the publisher’s website states. “But when the response to Smith’s offer fell radically short of his high hopes, Smith’s zeal cooled. Timbuctoo, Freemen’s Home, Blacksville, and other [Black] settlements were forgotten. History would marginalize this Black community for 150 years.”

Through her extensive research, Godine discovered that Smith’s land offer failed to make settlers out of most of his 3,000 deed holders for a variety of reasons, mainly because they simply could not afford to make use of his gift.

“They were more than poor; they were incapacitated by their poverty,” she said. “And this [is something] the rich man seems not to have grasped. A deed was nice to get, but it couldn’t underwrite the cost of moving to a distant wilderness. And not just moving, buying livestock, farm gear, food supplies, everything you needed to survive those first years before your new farm paid you back with crops. . . . But while Smith, of course, was disappointed, many of those families who did take up Adirondack homesteading made out well. Black enclaves spanning two counties were at Freemen’s Home, Timbuctoo, Blacksville, John Thomas Brook, Franklin, and St. Armand, and these pioneers didn’t call their Adirondack years a loss. They were community-builders [and] valued neighbors. Some of their descendants called the Adirondacks home into our century.”

In the book’s description, Cornell University Press applauds Godine for recovering the robust history of the Black pioneers who carved out futures for their families and their civic rights in the wilderness.

“Her immersive story returns the Black pioneers and their descendants to their rightful place at the center of this history,” the publisher states. “With stirring accounts of racial justice and no shortage of heroes, The Black Woods amplifies the unique significance of the Adirondacks in the American imagination.”

Godine’s book has received praise from the likes of historian Nell Painter, environmentalist Bill McKibben, and filmmaker Ken Burns.

“The Black Woods is a beautifully written, painstakingly researched, and uncommonly nuanced story, heretofore a footnote in the ongoing saga of race in America,” said Burns, who is celebrated for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle American history and culture. “But here is a real story, liberated from the chains of arrogant historiography and willing to look into dark corners of our national narrative and climb to summits that offer a panoramic ‘us.’”

Originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, Godine received her bachelor of arts in American studies from Hampshire College. She was an editorial assistant for the Heyday Press in Berkeley, California, and she wrote for the “Willamette Week” newspaper in Portland, Oregon, for five years.

She then earned her master of fine arts degree in fiction writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Godine has resided in Saratoga Springs since 1980 and has been writing and speaking about social trends, marginalized communities, and ethnic and Black neighborhoods in the Adirondack region since 1988. She is also the curator of the “Dreaming of Timbuctoo” exhibit at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in North Elba, NY.

“Twenty-five years ago, John Brown Lives! — a social justice group in the Adirondacks — tapped me to curate an exhibit on Timbuctoo, the long-gone Black farm colony in the Adirondacks [that] inspired the famous abolitionist John Brown to move his family to the region in 1849. I was skeptical, but the more we dug, the richer and more expansive the story got — bigger than Timbuctoo, bigger than John Brown, bigger than Gerrit Smith. [It was] time to start a book.”

Godine’s extensive research brought her to Boston, Washington, New York, Syracuse, and Plattsburgh, as well as to online scholarly sites.

“It took me well over a decade, but what can I say? When I step into a wormhole, it takes me all the way to China,” she said. “The social history of Adirondack ethnic and Black enclaves, migratory laborers, immigrants, and other non-elites has been the focus of my writing for over 30 years, and it always brings the news because, in most regional and local histories, these stories have gone missing. The history of the Black Woods was a little more than missing. In one history book after another, it was distorted, derided, and diminished. [Recovering] and recentering this chapter not only challenges a long exclusionary trend [but also] reveals our small upstate towns and backcountry to be much more diverse and socially dynamic than we know. People of color visiting the North Country discover they have a home, a stake, heroes, and pioneers in a landscape they assumed excluded them completely. Local people see their hometown narratives jostled and expanded. And I think that’s good news.”

Godine’s Nov. 7 talk at CPL is made possible by The Friends of the Library.

“I love this part of New York,” Godine said. “It’s beautiful, of course, but the towns and countryside thrum with not just history but a palpable respect for history, and Cazenovia was in the thick of it. Gerrit Smith made this town the site of his great 1850 anti-Fugitive Slave Law Convention for a reason. In my town, Saratoga Springs, an antislavery gathering would never have been tolerated.”

To learn more about Godine and “The Black Woods,” visit amygodine.com or search for the title at cornellpress.cornell.edu.