By Rhonan Mokriski on The Atlantic Black Box Project on August 1, 2020
I teach at an independent school in the sleepy Connecticut town of Salisbury (pop 3,598 in 2018). I have been living here for 24 years. My lens has been largely focused on world history – particularly China – so beyond the normal US survey idea of slavery, this is a topic that I knew relatively little about. Until really recently, I was always of a mind that slavery happened “down there.” Since I’ve been engaged in the work, I’ve been amazed at how steeped Connecticut generally, and the Upper Housatonic River Valley region specifically, is in this history. Continue reading.
The Atlantic Black Box Project is a public history project that empowers communities throughout New England to take up the critical work of researching and reckoning with our region’s complicity in the slave trade and our extensive involvement in the global economy of enslavement. This grassroots historical recovery movement is powered by citizen historians and guided by a broad coalition of scholars, community leaders, educators, archivists, museum professionals, antiracism activists, and artists.
