Forces for Good: Abolitionists in the Old Lead Mine Region

Historian Tracey Lee Roberts will present "Forces for Good: Abolitionists in the Old Lead Mine Region" in the 3rd Floor Auditorium at Carnegie-Stout Public Library in Dubuque at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, February 22, 2026. Everyone is welcome to attend this free event.

While slavery was an entrenched institution in the Old Lead Mine Region of Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin, local reformers and preachers fought back against this brutal, inhuman practice. In this presentation, Tracey Lee Roberts will use historical images, early maps, and stories about Dubuque-area abolitionists to outline the many forces for good that finally defeated the enslavers in the 1840s.

Tracey Lee Roberts is a retired Senior Lecturer (Emeritus) from the University of Wisconsin- Platteville. She has written dozens of papers about the people and events in the upper Midwest with a special focus on the Upper Mississippi River Lead-Zinc Mining District. She is a frequent guest lecturer at libraries and cultural institutions, and is currently finishing a full-length biography of Henry Dodge, first Territorial Governor and Senator from Wisconsin.

For more information, please call the Library at 563-589-4225 or visit us on Facebook.