Witness Stones Project Inc.

Restore History, Educate, and Honor Humanity

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Witness Stones Unearth New Haven’s History Of Enslavement

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Cold Spring School sixth grader Kymani Chapman. Lucy Gellman Photos.

By Lucy Gellman on Arts Council Greater New Haven on June 4, 2021

Sixth grader Kymani Chapman held a heavy cube steady in both hands, the letters on its face glinting. A name caught in the light: Stepna Primus, once enslaved by Amos Morris, Isaac Forbes and Enos Hemmingway in New Haven. Chapman steadied himself, feet spread wide as he lowered the stone into the ground. As he did, over two centuries of untold history came rushing back to a city that has tried to wipe them clean. Continue reading.

Curriculum Design and Memorials with Witness Stones

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From the Anti-Racist Teaching & Learning Collective on March 22, 2021

The Witness Stones Project began in 2017 in Guilford, Connecticut with the placement of three small plaques commemorating the lives of Moses, Candace, and Phillis. The project was inspired by the Stolpersteine project, which works to place small stones inscribed with the names and life details of Jews who were kidnapped and murdered during the Holocaust in front of the homes in which they used to live. Witness Stones has been working to memorialize enslaved individuals in several cities across Connecticut in a similar way. Continue reading.

 

Racial Trauma: Unchaining Ancestors’ Stories to Heal Cities

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Students listening to the talks their classmates are giving / Photo courtesy of Douglas Nygren

By Susana F. Molina in The Urban Activist on February 22, 2021

February is Afro-American History Month. It pays tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity. This year’s commemoration, eight months after the events in Minneapolis, has turned out in a different tone. The racial trauma of an unpayable moral debt lingers over American cities.

Since the Black Awakening of the 1960s Americans have felt more confident about the importance of black history and the contributions of Afro-Americans to history and culture. Across the Atlantic the Civil Rights movements of the sixties made young generations of Germans break with a period of silence imposed by their parents about national-socialism and the Holocaust. They started a long process to come to terms with their history. But have Americans done the same with slavery? Continue reading.

New England’s Abolitionist History At Odds With Racist Realities

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Pat Wilson Pheanious is a Connecticut state representative whose distant relatives are among the first to be memorialized in the Witness Stones Project, which honors the lives of enslaved people in Guilford, Connecticut. Photo Credit: Joe Amon / Connecticut Public / NENC

Witness Stones Project Co-Chair Pat Wilson Pheanious was a guest on a Vermont Public Radio radio series produced by the New England News Collaborative and America Amplified. The  focus of the episode was New England’s direct involvement and complicity in slavery and white supremacy.

We invite you to listen to the program here:  Racism in New England.

“Look at the Whole Story”: CT Educators Rethink Lessons on Racism, Slavery

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Photo credit: Meghan Friedmann

By Meghan Friedmann in the New Haven Register on July 31, 2020

A team of educators hopes to empower teachers to educate their students about racism and slavery in southern New England – and to do so correctly.

A nationally-renowned scholar, two Connecticut teachers and a state representative, all of whom advocate for a reconfiguration of curricula to incorporate overlooked history lessons, are working together to deliver the program teachers next week. Continue reading.

A Memorial Project Is Rediscovering Stories of Slavery in Connecticut

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Witness Stones in Guilford, Conn. marking the location where two 18th century residents named Phillis and Montros were enslaved. Photo credit: Meghan Friedmann.

By Erik Ofgang in Connecticut Magazine on July 24, 2019.

Shortly before the Revolutionary War, an enslaved Connecticut man named Jeffrey Brace was beaten unconscious by his new owner, John Burwell of Milford. Burwell struck Brace with his fists, legs and a chair. In a written account years later, Brace recalled that one blow to his head during the beating was so hard it “pealed [sic] up a piece of my scalp about as big as my three fingers.” After waking up, Brace was subjected to two rounds of whipping and made to walk a quarter-mile barefoot in the winter.

Brace’s visceral, difficult-to-read account of the horrors of slavery in Connecticut is the type of story we don’t often hear about Northeastern states, says Dennis Culliton, a recently retired teacher at Adams Middle School in Guilford. In Connecticut, we’re good at “pointing our fingers south and saying how awful those people were,” he says. But when it comes to confronting our own past, we have more trouble. Continue reading.

 

National Recognition for Witness Stones in Teaching Tolerance

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Photo Credit: Shana Sureck and Ian Christmann from Teaching Tolerance Magazine

Please read the feature article, “Bearing Witness” by Jenifer Frank, in the Spring 2019 issue of Teaching Tolerance:

Hana started her school paper with a description of Guilford’s town green—and for good reason. The beautiful, centuries-old space is the hub of this Connecticut coastal community. Residents like Hana, who attends Adams Middle School in Guilford, stroll beneath its shade trees, browse at the quaint shops on its perimeter and gather there for the town’s annual Holiday Tree Lighting. Continue Reading.

Teaching Tolerance is on a mission is to help teachers and schools educate children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy. They provide free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use their materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants. The program emphasizes social justice and anti-bias.

Guilford Project Researching Slavery Finds Descendant Living in Connecticut

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Photo credit: Meghan Friedmann

By Ed Stannard in the New Haven Register on November 4, 2018

GUILFORD — Patricia Wilson Pheanious was sitting on the porch of her Ashford home when her husband came out and told her that someone was on the phone and wanted to talk about her ancestry.

Dennis Culliton, co-founder of the Witness Stones Project, in which markers are placed where enslaved Guilford residents lived or worked, had found a living descendant, the sixth-great-granddaughter of Montros and Phillis, Africans brought from Barbados to Connecticut in 1710.

Slavery in New England

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Dennis Culliton and Douglas Nygren spoke to the Connecticut Academy of Arts & Sciences (Photo: Gregory Tignor and Monica Aspianto)

 

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.

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