Restore History, Educate, and Honor Humanity
By Katrina Koerting in the West Hartford News on June 14, 2021
The weekend of events kicks off at 10 a.m. Saturday with an installment ceremony of the Witness Stones Project at Old Center Cemetery. This is the project’s fourth installation, which brings attention to the enslaved people and honors their contributions to West Hartford through research, education and civic engagement. Continue reading.
Dr. Tracey Wilson describes the Witness Stone work in Hartford on EyeWitness News 3.
We invite you to watch here:
By Sophie Christensen on We-Ha.com on June 9, 2021
In a January Letter to the Editor, Aliza Sadiq and Regina Miller (two Kingswood Oxford students) asked the West Hartford Town Council to rename New Street in Blue Back Square. They wish to honor Peleg Nott, who had been enslaved in West Hartford but according to research was an extraordinary man eventually elected to the honorable position of “Black governor.”
After their research for the Witness Stones Project, Aliza and Regina discovered shocking truths about the history of slavery in town. There were about “70 people enslaved in West Hartford alone, which is double the number we thought it was four years ago,” they said in the letter. Continue reading.
By Chris Dehnel on Patch on May 26, 2021
West Hartford’s celebration begins at 10:00AM on Saturday, June 19th at the Old Center Cemetery for the Installment Ceremony of the Witness Stones Project. Through research, education, and civic engagement, the Witness Stones Project seeks to restore the history and to honor the humanity and contributions of enslaved individuals who helped build our communities. Continue reading.
By Tracey Wilson on We-Ha.com on April 3, 2021
On Monday, March 29, five members of the Community Witness Stones Class filled a jar with dirt from where Frank (c. 1730-1810) was forced to work by his enslavers. On Albany Avenue, in the woods west of Renbrook School, bordering on the reservoir, the group walked into the woods and dug in the ground, thinking about Frank’s captivity at the hands of Rachel and Ebenezer Welles and their son Ashbel. Continue reading.
By Ronni Newton on We-Ha.Com on February 22, 2021.
Witness Stones West Hartford project directors Tracey Wilson and Liz Devine have worked with students and others in the community to share the previously untold history of some individuals who were once enslaved by residents of the West Division (now West Hartford), and a series of virtual classes, offered at no cost, will expand that conversation to include a study of several additional people. Continue reading.
In the Kingswood Oxford News published on January 21, 2021.
The Witness Stones Project is an ongoing one in the Kingswood Oxford School history department each year that engages the students in authentic, real-world learning. The project seeks to honor the humanity and contributions of the enslaved people who helped build the community we live in today. Since its inception in 2019, students work to build on the work that was done by classmates before them. Each year, different pieces of the puzzle are uncovered, carefully put into place, and a bigger piece of the local historical fabric completed. Continue reading.
By Katie McCarthy on the Atlantic Black Box Project on January 17, 2021
This 2020-2021 academic year marks the third year that my students at Kingswood Oxford in West Hartford have participated in the Witness Stones Project and it’s been the most inspiring and meaningful work of my teaching career. It’s also been the most doubt-inducing, time-consuming work as well. Teaching about race, conducting the slow, laborious historical research, finding ways to engage students with primary documents and help them see the threads from past to present, collaborating with local historians, and guiding students as they create their final projects is no easy task. Continue reading.
The Atlantic Black Box Project is a grassroots historical recovery project that empowers communities throughout New England to research, reveal, and begin reckoning with the region’s complicity in the slave trade and the global economy of enslavement while recentering the stories of its racially marginalized groups. As a collaborative research platform and learning community, The Project serves as a hub and a clearinghouse to all those who wish to support this work.
Kingswood Oxford students, Regina Miller ‘22 and Aliza Sadiq ‘22 wrote a proposal to the West Hartford Town Council, in which they outlined their reasons to rename New Street in Blue Black Square after Peleg Nott. We invite you to read it here.
We invite you to listen to this podcast from Kingswood Oxford students Garrett Gallup and Isaias Wooden:
