Professor of history Justin Behrend published “Abolitionism and the Struggle Against Slavery in Livingston County” in the Fall 2025 issue of the Livingston County Historical Review. This article explores the creation of the Livingston County Anti-Slavery Society in 1837. It was a reform group of more than one hundred residents who were committed to ending slavery in the United States. Their activism provides insight into how the nation shifted from tolerating slavery to waging war to end it.

Justin Behrend has served on the Geneseo faculty since 2007. He teaches courses on the Civil War era, African American history, slavery, and other interdisciplinary topics. He is the author of Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War (2015), along with articles on Reconstruction, emancipation, and slave resistance. Behrend is also a Livingston County Historical Society board member and contributed to the “Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Civil War” exhibit at the LCHS museum in Geneseo.