September 1, 2022 • By Brian Hayden
The Buffalo History Museum’s fall program series, Happy Hour History, will continue through Dec. 21.
The Wednesday night lecture and event series features local and regional historians speaking on a variety of topics, as well as documentary screenings sponsored by WNED. Beer and wine will be available for purchase at each event. Admission for the program series is $5 per event unless otherwise noted, and free for members. Each program starts at 6 p.m. and the Museum will remain open until 8 p.m.
The series schedule is as follows.
12/7/22: “Distinctly American: Secessionism & The Road to the Civil War” with Patrick F. Ryan
Join The Buffalo History Museum’s Programs and Education Coordinator, Patrick F. Ryan, for a retrospective study of the role that secessionism played throughout American history, beginning in the late 18th century. See how John C. Calhoun’s (and other Southerners’) ideas and rhetoric were not novel. This presentation investigates the early whispers of nullification and secessionism in the United States, namely, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, Essex Junto, the Hartford Convention, indecision by the founders, and how this indecision shaped later American politicians in the mid-19th century.
12/14/22: “Buffalo is A-Wheel: Parades, Runs, and the Buffalo Bicycling Century Ride of 1888” with Dr. Claire Schen
Writing about Buffalo, journalist and suffragist Ada Kendall proclaimed the “City is A-wheel.” Indeed, late 19th-century Buffalo was a hub of bicycle manufacturing and riding. Efforts to map routes, plan bicycle parades and events, and undertake adventurous “runs,” like the Buffalo Bicycling Club’s first Century Ride of 1888, demonstrated the fervor for cycling around 1890. Join us for this presentation on Buffalo’s cycling history by Dr. Claire Schen, a University at Buffalo professor who specializes in European and Atlantic World history.
12/21/22: FREE WNED Documentary Screening
Underground Railroad: The William Still Story tells the dramatic story of William Still, one of the most important yet largely unheralded individuals of the Underground Railroad. Still was determined to get as many runaway as he could to “Freedom’s Land,” smuggling them across the U.S. boarder to Canada. Still was the director of a complex network of abolitionists, sympathizers and safe houses that stretched from Philadelphia to what is now Southern Ontario.