This public talk provides insight into the compelling life of Gregoria Fraser Goins, an Afro-Dominican woman on the margins of African-American history.  Born to a West Indian apothecary and an African-American doctor in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic in 1883, Goins and her mother relocated to the United States following her father’s untimely death.  Goins lived most of her life amongst well-to-do African Americans in Washington, D.C. As a result, she most often appears in the footnotes of African-American history as the biographer of her mother, one of the first black female doctors; as a member of the National Association of Negro Musicians; or as supplying pictures of black American life.  Yet despite these Washington ties, she consistently visited her homeland of the Dominican Republic.  Believing Goins’s life is a worthy subject in its own right, just as worthy as her mother’s, this talk is an effort to move her from the margins to the nexus of African-American and Latin American History.   

Presented by Dr. Lauren Hammond Ford, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History at Augustana College

This program is intended for adults. Registration is encouraged but not required.