Arts-In-Education Exploratory Enrichment

Remember Liss

Presented by Remember Liss, Inc.

Meet historian and author Claire Bellerjeau as she reveals the incredible life of an enslaved Black woman from New York named Liss. Born in the 1760s, Liss was enslaved by the Townsend family of Oyster Bay, Long Island, whose son was Robert Townsend aka “Culper, Jr.” - George Washington's lead spy in Manhattan during the Revolutionary War. Mid-war, Liss escaped with a British commander, only to be re-enslaved in Manhattan by another enemy officer. As the Culper Spy Ring used secret codes and invisible ink to smuggle vital information to Washington, Liss may also have engaged in intelligence gathering for the Patriot cause. Liss’s escape with the British, re-enslavement in Manhattan and later Charleston, and her complex struggle for freedom sheds new light on the lives of thousands of other forgotten African Americans during the founding era in New York.