Thursday, June 15, 2026, 6:30PM, Lopez Center for Community and the Arts, 204 Village Rd
Join historian Lorraine McConaghy for a talk based on her book, FREE BOY, the biography of Charles Mitchell, an enslaved boy held in Olympia, Washington Territory. In 1860, Mitchell was recruited to the Puget Sound maritime “Underground Railroad” by a trio of African-Canadian men. His flight to freedom in Victoria on board the international mail steamer Eliza Anderson became an international incident, and the flashpoint for discussion of race in the antebellum territory.
Speaker Bio:
Lorraine McConaghy earned the Ph.D. in history at the University of Washington in 1992, and has worked in public history as a museum historian since that time. Winner of the Robert Gray Medal, McConaghy’s research has emphasized the maritime Pacific Northwest, 1850-1870, although she is currently working on an encounter between an indigenous man and the crew of the USS DECATUR in the Strait of Magellan.
