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#OldLymeCT

Their Kindred Earth: Photographs by William Earle Williams

WSP · Feb 22, 2025 ·

William Earle Williams

OLD LYME, CONN.- The FloGris Museum in Old Lyme, CT, presents its first solo exhibition by a contemporary Black artist, Their Kindred Earth: Photographs by William Earle Williams, February 22 through June 22, 2025. The exhibition of newly commissioned photographs makes visible little-known sites across Old Lyme (as well as the state and nation) significant to enslavement, emancipation, and African Americans’ contributions to Connecticut history and culture. The title Their Kindred Earth is drawn from the poem “An Appeal to Women” by Black abolitionist Sarah Louise Forten Puvis (1814-1883) in which she calls for racial equality by understanding that all people, regardless of their skin color, return to the earth after death. Williams’s 120 poignant images acknowledge and honor the lives of the Black and Indigenous people who contributed in essential and often unrecognized ways to Connecticut’s society, culture, and economy. An array of educational programs helps visitors unpack these lesser–known Connecticut stories and grapple with their ramifications.

A Distinguished Chair Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Fine Arts, and Curator of Photography at Haverford College (PA), Williams (b. 1950) first traveled to the Museum in 2011 to visit the exhibition, The Exacting Eye of Walker Evans. Evans, the famed modernist photographer who had a home in Lyme, became a mentor to Williams in the 1970s and advised him to pursue graduate study at Yale, where he received his MFA from Yale School of Art in 1978. In 2021 Williams reconnected with the Museum through his interest in Witness Stones Old Lyme, a local initiative that documents and shares research about histories of local enslavement via a website and physical “stones.” These small brass markers denote where enslaved people lived and worked in the Lyme area, including three on the Museum’s front lawn, commemorating those who labored in a house that once stood where the Griswold House is now located. Inspired by the opportunity to deepen understanding about sites of enslavement and explore untold stories of the Black Americans who lived, labored, and traveled through Old Lyme on their route to freedom, the Museum’s Curator of Exhibitions Jennifer “Jenny” Stettler Parsons, Ph.D. invited Williams to return as Artist-in-Residence to revisit his research and create new photographs that would bring visibility to these Connecticut histories.

Parsons and Williams worked closely with historian Carolyn Wakeman, Ph.D., who spearheads the Witness Stones Old Lyme project. The three collaborated with members of the community to identify local sites of African American history. During 2023-24 Williams captured for the project over 2,000 images in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey that relate local sites to other regional locations important in African American history.

The exhibition opens with a gallery featuring Williams’s photographs of Old Lyme. Here visitors discover that familiar houses, cemeteries, and landscapes throughout the region hold hidden histories as places where enslaved people once lived, worked, sought escape, or were buried. At the beginning of the American Revolution, there were more enslaved people in Connecticut than in any other New England colony. An introductory section called “Connecticut Waterways & the West Indies Trade” contextualizes the region’s role in supporting the system of enslaved labor that expanded profits to Caribbean sugar plantations. Photographs Williams made of the Connecticut River and its shoreline encourage viewers to visualize the historic commerce along the waterway. In Old Lyme Marina, Old Lyme, Connecticut (2023), Williams’s dramatic view of contemporary yachts recalls earlier sailing vessels on the river that exported products like timber and salted shad and imported sugar and molasses. Another section entitled “Enslavement on Lyme Street” traces the photographer’s walks down the town’s main thoroughfare. He paused to make portraits of the four houses where Arabella, Jenny, Prince, Nancy, and others were enslaved by four generations of the Noyes family, sites now marked by Witness Stones.

The second gallery broadens the narrative through Williams’s photographs of subjects related to Black history in greater Connecticut and the nation. A section called “The Trade” offers views of the nearby port towns where African-descended people were disembarked and sold, including Perth Amboy and Jersey City (NJ); Battery Park City and Wall Street (NYC); New Haven, Middletown, New London (CT), and Bristol (RI). “Freedom’s Path” highlights historic locations in Connecticut linked to abolitionists David Ruggles, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and Prudence Crandall. In Stairwell at Prudence Crandall’s School, Canterbury, Connecticut (2023), Williams’s interior of the schoolhouse encourages viewers to remember the bravery of Crandall and her students who raced down the staircase to flee threatened violence from those opposed to educating “young misses of color.”

Williams’s photographs harness the power of site-specificity to bring compassion, empathy, and immediacy to people and histories that are otherwise invisible, filed away in scattered archives, awaiting discovery. A final section of Their Kindred Earth titled “North & South: A Life’s Work, A National Journey” showcases Williams’s exploration of Black history throughout his distinguished photographic career. In 1986 he made the picture Abraham Brian Barn, Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg, PA, which serves as an entry point for learning about the life of Abraham Brian, who escaped slavery and purchased a farm in 1857 that he used as a station on the Underground Railroad. Brian was a successful farmer until the battle of Gettysburg destroyed his crops. Bullet holes from the battle are visible in the barn’s façade. The site is a short walk from a marker locating the podium where Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address. The historical insights conveyed through Williams’s photographs prompt audiences to consider how African American history is remembered, to ponder details that have been lost, and to recognize how much still remains to be uncovered.

“We could not have found a better partner for this project,” states Executive Director Joshua Campbell Torrance. “It is our hope that visitors will be moved by Williams’s stirring images and commit to further reflection on the exhibition’s themes.”

Juneteenth Joyfully Celebrated at FloGris Museum with Jazz & Poetry

WSP · Jun 28, 2024 ·

Celebrating Juneteenth at the Florence Griswold Museum on June 22 were, from left to right, poets Marilyn Nelson, Antoinette Brim-Bell, Kate Rushin, and Rhonda Ward, along with musicians James Austin Jr, Nat Reeves, Abraham Burton, and Michael Ode. All photos by Witness Stones Old Lyme.

 

In LymeLine.com on June 16, 2024

OLD LYME—On Saturday, June 22, Witness Stones Old Lyme presented a celebratory event filled with jazz and poetry on the lawn of the Florence Griswold Museum. This event honored Juneteenth, a federal holiday celebrating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, and offered a vibrant fusion of music and spoken word.

Over 150 attendees experienced a powerful, moving, and joyful afternoon enriched by a harmonious blend of jazz and poetry.

Attendees at the Witness Stones Old Lyme event listen intently to the poets speaking at the Juneteenth Celebration of Jazz & Poetry at the FloGris Museum

Acclaimed Connecticut poets Marilyn Nelson, Kate Rushin, Rhonda Ward, and Antoinette Brim-Bell offered a range of work that mixed humor with poignant recollections and included tributes in verse to those once enslaved in historic Lyme. The poets’ words memorably captured forgotten voices and vividly brought to life the experience of bondage in the Lyme-Old Lyme community.

The Nat Reeves Quartet performs at the Witness Stones Old Lyme Juneteenth Celebration of Jazz & Poetry at the FloGris Museum.

The celebration showcased the Nat Reeves Quartet, with Nat Reeves on bass joined by saxophonist Abraham Burton, pianist James Austin, Jr., and percussionist Michael Ode. Both Nat Reeves—a renowned figure in the jazz world for over 40 years—and Abraham Burton have contributed significantly to the genre as performers and educators, who train and inspire new generations of jazz musicians.

The Nat Reeves Quartet was one of the highlights of the Witness Stones Old Lyme Juneteenth Celebration of Jazz & Poetry at the FloGris Museum.

The quartet’s stirring presentation combined with the poets’ voices offered attendees a reflective and uplifting experience honoring the legacy and cultural contributions of African Americans.

The Juneteenth celebration, held on a former site of enslavement, highlighted the importance of remembering and honoring the past and served as a reminder of the continuing struggle for freedom and equality.

More than 150 people turned out for the Witness Stones Old Lyme Juneteenth Celebration of Jazz & Poetry at the FloGris Museum.

Witness Stones Installation Ceremony

WSP · May 31, 2024 ·


Richard Wyman, of Old Lyme, plays “This Little Light of Mine” and is joined unexpectedly by Nikita Waller, who sang a solo earlier, and her son Kenneth Waller-Beaulieu, 6 months, at the end of the Witness Stones Old Lyme installation ceremony held Friday, May 31, 2024, at the Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library in Old Lyme. (Dana Jensen/The Day)

 

By Dana Jensen in The Day on May 31, 2024

Old Lyme ― A ceremony was held at Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library Friday to recognize 10 more Witness Stones being placed at the Lyme Library. The Witness Stones program started in Old Lyme in 2020. The group now has a total of 48 stones in Lyme and Old Lyme. Richard Wyman and Nikita Waller performed solos. During Wyman’s final solo of the song “This Little Light of Mine“ Waller joined him. The Witness Stones program does research to learn about the slaves who lived in an area and recognizes them with a small plaque.

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