Several hundred people descended on the Rutgers Newark campus this weekend for New Jersey’s largest annual black history month conference, the Marion T. Wright lecture series…

This year the conference focused on the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Some of the country’s most celebrated scholars and historians spoke about the impact of the historical document on not only African American History but American history as a whole.  Steven Hahn, author and professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of this year featured lecturers.

“I think it’s really important for us as a recognition of how much the history of our country is tied up with slavery and how signal of an event it was and how unfinished the work of emancipation is still with us.”

Other highlights of this year’s event include Princeton University Professor and Historian Tera Hunter who spoke about the impact of slavery and freedom on African-American marriage.