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Yale University and the Politics of Slavery

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“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.

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.

Guilford Superintendent Discusses Witness Stones Project

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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.

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