Minutes of the 1464th Meeting of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences by Gregory Tignor and Monica Aspiantoon on February 13, 2018
The President introduced Douglas Nygren who introduced the guest speaker with the following statement. “When I approached Gregory last April about our doing a presentation on the Witness Stone Project and slavery in Guilford, he booked us for February because it is Black History Month. That sounded appropriate. I didn’t know, however, how appropriate the talk would be. Charlottesville had not occurred, and the project we had imagined was just an idea. The plan was to honor those enslaved in Guilford with memory stones that would be placed in the sidewalk. They would bear the enslaved person’s name and vital data. We hoped to have a school component, but didn’t know whether that would be possible and we didn’t know how the town would receive our project. We have been surprised and grateful at how receptive the town has been. Continue reading.
