Restore History, Educate, and Honor Humanity
Witness Stones Project affiliate Witness to History: Slavery in Guilford presented the webinar “Yale University & the Politics of Slavery” on November 4, 2021
The talk was given by Bennett Parten, a doctoral candidate and a member of the Yale and Slavery Group which the institution’s president created and charged with studying the University’s history.
The poets’ collaborative project appears in the the November 2021 issue of Poetry magazine. The poems were commissioned by the Witness Stones Old Lyme Affiliate and were debuted at the June 4, 2021, Witness Stones Installation in Old Lyme. We invite you to read the interview about the collaboration and the full portfolio of poems:
What birthed this collaboration?
Although the four of us did think of ourselves as a “team” of poets, our project is less a collaboration among the four of us than a collaboration of each of us with the brilliant and generous historian who was our guide: Carolyn Wakeman. Carolyn is a former professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as faculty chair of the Graduate School of Journalism and director of the Asia-Pacific Program. Our collaboration grew from a larger collaboration with the Witness Stones Project, started in 2017 in Guilford, CT, with the mission to restore the history and honor the humanity of the enslaved individuals who helped build our communities. The Project provides research assistance, teacher development, and curriculum support to help middle and high school students study the history of slavery in their own communities. The students explore the lives of enslaved individuals through primary source documents, doing original historical research with the aim of remembering. And, of course, everyone involved in the project knows that we are collaborating not only with each other, but also with long-gone enslaved individuals who were denied voices during their lifetimes.
—Marilyn
“Yale University & the Politics of Slavery” is the next talk in the webinar series co-sponsored by Guilford’s Witness Stones Project Affiliate Witness to History: Slavery in Guilford.
The talk will be given by Bennett Parten, a doctoral candidate and a member of the Yale and Slavery Group which the institution’s president created and charged with studying the University’s history.
“As an American institution that is 319 years old,” President Peter Salovey wrote on creating the task force, “Yale has a complex past that includes associations, many of them formative, with individuals who actively promoted slavery, anti-Black racism, and other forms of exploitation. We have a responsibility to explore this history, including its most difficult aspects; we cannot ignore our institution’s own ties to slavery and racism, and we should take this opportunity to research, understand, analyze, and communicate that history.”
In his talk, Mr. Parten will discuss the university’s relationship to slavery and abolitionism, and show how campus debate evolved in the lead-up to the Civil War. His interests include the histories of race, slavery, abolition, and emancipation.
Registration is required to join this webinar.
Click here to register for this online lecture.
By Mark Pazniokas in the Connecticut Mirror on October 24, 2021
Guilford’s children are capable of absorbing hard lessons about an overlooked past,” [Culliton] said.
“You read a book like ‘Disowning Slavery’ by Joanne Pope Mellish, and you read that book, and it’s not critical race theory,” Culliton said. “It is history of New England and how we forgot about slavery.”
Witness Stones has now installed 72 markers, not all in Guilford. There are more to come, each with a story of an enslaved human being who contributed to building New England.
They can be found on both sides of the Guilford Green, one by the entrance to Town Hall. They are meant to be discovered, to provoke a question, a thought of what came before, what it means today.
Witness Stones is about telling an uncomfortable truth, something done less than formally in the U.S. than other nations, Culliton said.
Canada’s treatment of its indigenous people is the subject of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Germany is forthright in confronting the Holocaust. In fact, the Witness Stones was inspired by the stolpersteine, literally “stumbling stone” in German. They commemorate the lives of Jews killed in the Holocaust on the streets where they lived and worked.
“In South Africa, there’s a lot of things that aren’t wonderful, but they tell the truth there,” said Culliton, who has traveled there. “They tell the truth about apartheid in Johannesburg. They tell the truth about slavery in Cape Town, and it’s out in the open.”
Culliton said the same can be done in the U.S.
“I never taught the kids that America was an awful place. I’m a Marine Corps veteran. My father fought in World War II. I love my country,” Culliton said. “You have issues with your family, you don’t love them less. And that’s our country — we don’t stop loving our country because it made mistakes.” Read the full article.
From Connecticut Public Radio on October 19, 2021
Guilford High School English Chair George Cooksey and Superintendent Paul Freeman explain that while critical race theory is not itself taught in the K-12 environment in Guilford, “dimension” and diversity of source material is still a priority. Listen to the broadcast here.
The Greenfield Recorder on September 27, 2021
DEERFIELD — Historic Deerfield welcomed John Davis, the museum’s new president and CEO, earlier this month as he begins his job after being hired in May.
Davis, the former provost and undersecretary for museums, education and research at the Smithsonian Institution, said in a press release that he is ready to help Historic Deerfield move forward in the 21st century. Continue reading.
By Journal Inquirer Staff on September 24, 2021
SUFFIELD — Ten local organizations have received grants totaling $80,753 from the Amiel P. Zak Public Service Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.
The fund, which benefits local organizations, was established in 2002 by Michael Zak to honor his late father, Amiel, a teacher at Suffield High School for 35 years who also served on numerous town boards and civic and public associations. According to Michael, his father often expressed frustration when the town did not have the budget to meet what he considered important community needs. Continue reading.
By Ronni Newton on We-Ha.com on September 23, 2021
A stroll through the Old North Cemetery on North Main Street in West Hartford reveals gravestones bearing many familiar names – names used for town roads, schools, and key landmarks – but it’s also quickly apparent that many of the stones are in a state of disrepair.
“I’ve always had an interest in doing something about that cemetery,” said Matthew Warshauer, a history professor at Central Connecticut State University who is known to town residents for the Halloween displays at his North Main Street home, right up the street from the historic cemetery.
Many of West Hartford’s founders are buried in the Old North Cemetery, which was created in the late 18th century after the Old Center Cemetery (a block farther south) became too small. It also serves as the final resting place of veterans from the American Revolution, War of 1812, and the Civil War. Continue reading.
The Witness Stones Project, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to restore the history and honor the humanity of the enslaved individuals who helped build our communities, today announced a new affiliation with CREC Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts.
A generous grant from the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund will allow the school to use the Project’s curriculum and landscape markers to expand their teaching of the history of slavery in colonial Connecticut.
The Witness Stones Project’s Local Corporate Partner in Hartford, Pro Bono Partnership, is also providing crucial support.
Students will examine primary source documents, such property, church, and vital records; wills and probate inventories; and census data, in order to understand the reality of slavery and to restore the memory of those individuals who were enslaved. They will learn how to document and describe the dehumanization and paternalism of slavery; the economic and legal framework that supported slavery; and, the agency, resistance, and contributions of the enslaved to our local and national history. Finally, these students will be inviting their community to witness as they install memorial stones for individuals who were enslaved in their town.
The Witness Stones Project was founded in 2017 in Guilford, Connecticut. Since then, the Project has expanded to work with affiliated institutions in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.
The CREC Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts provides a rigorous college-preparatory academic education and pre-professional arts education in a an equitable, culturally competent environment.
The William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund’s mission is to achieve equity in education by working with those affected and inspiring all to end racism and poverty.
Pro Bono Partnership, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, provides free business and transactional legal assistance to other nonprofits. The Partnership recruits and supports volunteer attorneys with a range of specializations to help nonprofits in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York achieve their goals, avoid risk, increase capacity, and better serve their constituencies.
