Dreaming of Timbuctoo

Dreaming of Timbuctoo tells the story of a visionary and pragmatic response to the harsh political and social climate in antebellum New York State. In 1846, only nineteen years after the abolition of slavery in New York, legislators reinstated a $250 property requirement for African American voters. Gerrit Smith, a reformer from central New York, responded with a plan as radical as it was risky. Smith resolved to give away 120,000 acres of mostly Adirondack wilderness to 3000 black New Yorkers. Influential leaders such as Frederick Douglass worked with Smith to promote the distribution of land while, in 1849, abolitionist John Brown moved to New York State with his family to help the homestead farm.