Witness Stones Project Inc.

Restore History, Educate, and Honor Humanity

In The Media

Poets Marilyn Nelson, Rhonda M. Ward, Antoinette Brim-Bell, and Kate Rushin and Their Witness Stones Project Collaboration

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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

Continue reading.

Witness Stones Project Executive Director Makes the Case for Teaching History

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With its Witness Stones Project, Guilford has confronted an overlooked history of slavery in New England. Courtesy of CTMirror.

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.

WSP Looks Forward to Working with New Historic Deerfield President

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The Greenfield Recorder on September 27, 2021

Jeff Davis

 

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.

Conservation Project Planned for West Hartford’s Historic Old North Cemetery

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Courtesy of We-Ha.com

 

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.

Witness Stones Project Joins Northeast Slavery Records Collaborative

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The Witness Stones Project is proud to join the Atlantic Black Box Project, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Monmouth University as an organizational member of the Northeast Slavery Records Collaborative.

The Northeast Slavery Records Collaborative (NSRC) develops and maintains an online searchable compilation of records, called the Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI). The NESRI identifies records of enslavement, including records that identify individual enslaved persons and enslavers, for the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey.

NESRI will index census records, slave trade transactions, cemetery records, birth certifications, manumissions, ship inventories, newspaper accounts, private narratives, legal documents and many other sources. The goal is to deepen the understanding of slavery in the participating states by bringing together information that until now has been largely disconnected and difficult to access. This allows for searches that combine records from all indexed sources based on parameters such as the name of an owner, a place name, and date ranges.

Witness Stones West Hartford Receives West Hartford Greater Together Community Fund Award

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By Ronni Newton on We-Ha.comi on July 28, 2021

The West Hartford Greater Together Community Fund, which announced in January plans to award the first $25,000 of grant money to local nonprofits, announced Wednesday that seven organizations have will receive awards in the inaugural cycle.

The program, formed by The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving and administered by an all-volunteer advisory committee of town residents, considered applications for grants to fund projects that would “improve or enhance the quality of life in West Hartford or otherwise contribute to address a direct need” in the town, the committee said in a news release announcing the grants. Continue reading.

New Memorials First to Acknowledge Difficult Truth of Slaves in Greenwich

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By Don Snyder in Greenwich Time on July 14, 2021

Memorials to victims of the Holocaust, known as “stolpersteine” or “stumbling blocks,” are found throughout Europe from Trondheim, Norway to Thessaloniki, Greece. More than 75,000 of these brass plaques, created by German artist Gunter Demnig, have been placed outside the former homes of the victims, whose names are engraved on the plaques. “Emordet”— “Murdered” — appears under their names. Continue reading.

West Hartford’s Town Green Rededicated as ‘Unity Green’

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From left: Adrienne Billings-Smith, Rosemarie Tate, Gai Crockett, Tammy Exum, Carol Anderson Blanks, Judy Casperson, and Lorna Thomas-Farquharson at the dedication of Unity Green on June 20, 2021. Photo credit: Ronni Newton.

 

By Ronni Newton on We-Ha.com on June 20, 2021

West Hartford’s second annual Juneteenth celebration, held over the weekend of June 19-20, 2021, was full of joy juxtaposed by serious messages and actions, with the observation culminating late Sunday morning as a crowd gathered for the rededication of the town’s green as Unity Green.

West Hartford’s town green – that narrow triangle of land that splits the northbound and southbound lanes of South Main Street just south of Farmington Avenue and is the longtime site of banners and public gatherings – had previously been named Goodman Green, in honor of Timothy Goodman, who deeded it to First Church, which in turn has leased the land to the town since 1924. Recent research into the town’s history conducted as part of the Witness Stones project brought to light the fact that, along with some of West Hartford’s other prominent families for whom roadways and buildings have been named, Goodman was, indeed, a slaveholder. Continue reading.

Witness Stone Would Mark Location Where Slave Lived in Suffield

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By Matthew P. Knox in the Journal Inquirer  on June 15, 2021

SUFFIELD — Residents who walk by the corner of North Main Street and Bridge Street may soon stumble upon a new addition.

A witness stone, a plaque 4 inches in length and width, is going to be embedded in the stone wall along the sidewalk to honor the life of Tamer, an enslaved woman who worked in a home at the location in the late 1700s. Continue reading.

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