Slavery and Freedom in New England
The 1st National Meeting of
the U.S. Partnership
UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade
Education Project
Hosted by
The Gilder Lehrman Center
for the Study of Slavery,
Resistance, and Abolition
McMillan Center for International and Area Studies
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
July 25 – 28, 2002
Slavery and Freedom In New England is part of an international plan to introduce the UNESCO
Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project to educators and scholars in the
United States. The goal of this meeting is to establish a credited professional
development experience for all participants, which clearly conveys the
historical context for the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Connecticut region.
In addition, those present will contribute to the refinement of the American
operations and offerings of the TST Education Project.
Historian Garry Nash has observed, “Six
out of every seven persons who crossed the Atlantic to take up life in the
Americas in the 300 years before the American Revolution were enslaved
Africans.” Although the slave trade and its legacy lie at the heart of the
American experience, teaching about the Transatlantic Slave Trade is a
challenge which requires research, innovation and imagination. Textbooks and course materials in school
districts across the United States verify that this formative dimension of
American life remains little emphasized, imperfectly understood and poorly
supported with materials.
In response, a consortium of institutions
led by the Deep South Regional Humanities Center and including Yale’s Gilder
Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, the Civil
War Era Center at Pennsylvania State University, the National Underground
Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, and the Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and
Atlantic World at the College of Charleston,
have joined forces with neighboring school districts
showing special interests in global education, American history and the
revitalization of humanities instruction, to form the United States Partnership
of the UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade (TST) Education Project.
The history of Connecticut, the quintessentially
Yankee state, provides an exceptional window into this difficult heritage, and
makes it clear that slavery was a national issue, not merely a southern one.
While the state provided many milestones in the story of freedom, from its
central role in the Revolution to its extensive involvement in the Underground
Railroad and the Civil War, Connecticut had the longest experience of slavery
of any state in New England (to 1848).
The state's traditional
nickname, the "Nutmeg State," makes explicit Connecticut's role as a
provisioner to the other colonies of products from the slave plantations of the
West Indies, including molasses and spices.
As Cincinnati's National Underground Railroad Freedom Center has
recognized, Connecticut--the site of the Amistad incident--represents an ideal
location to link the story of resistance to slavery in the United States to the
global story of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the African Diaspora. Moreover, Connecticut is the home of the
state-chartered African American Freedom Trail, which incorporates 88 sites
throughout the state that illustrate the many stories of the contributions that
African Americans and their allies, progressive Whites, made to the struggle
for freedom, equality and the fashioning of the history of Connecticut and the
nation.
Two other advantages make Connecticut an exceptional
location to tell the story of American slavery and its destruction. The first
is our compactness. It is just an hour
and a half from New Haven to Thompson in the northeast corner or to Salisbury
in the northwest, and every historic site in Connecticut is an easy one-day
field trip from the most distant schools in the state. The second advantage lies in our
centuries-old designation as the "Land of Steady Habits." Throughout its history, Connecticut has
faced the same problems that have afflicted other states, from struggles over
political representation and religious freedom in the seventeenth, eighteenth,
and early nineteenth centuries to the campaigns for civil rights of the 1960s
and the continuing push for school desegregation today. For the most part, however, we have solved
our problems without violent conflict, often in ways that became models for the
nation. As the mayor of war-torn Freetown, Sierra Leone, observed on a recent
visit to its sister city New Haven, "the people of Connecticut love
liberty, harmony, and the rule of law.
That is why my countrymen [the Africans of the Amistad] were freed."
We hope that this conference will serve as a useful introduction to the
efforts of the U.S. Partnership of the
UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project to understand our
nation’s complex heritage of slavery and freedom.
Thursday, July 25
(All
Thursday activities take place at Henry R. Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue)
8:00
– 8:45 Continental
Breakfast and Registration
8:45 – 9:00 Welcome from Yale Secretary Linda Koch Lorimer, Greeting from Gustav
Ranis, Director, McMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and David
Brion Davis, Directork Gilder Lehrman Center
Recognition of Honored
Guests
9:00 – 9:30 Overview of the
Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project
What is the UNESCO TST project? Why is it important?
Why are we here? What can we expect to accomplish at the end of this
experience?
Dr. Andre Kramp, International Director, UNESCO TST Education
Project
Dr. Sylvia Frey, Director, Deep
South Regional Humanities Center and Convener of U.S. Partnership of the UNESCO
TST Education Project
9:30
– 10:30 Keynote
Address: The Importance of the Study
of the Transatlantic Slave
Trade
Selective memory and how America has dealt with its
history of slavery. How we got to where we are now in terms of the Civil War;
Why was it fought?
Dr. David Blight, Professor of
African American Studies and History, Amherst College, and 2002 winner, Fredrick
Douglas Book Award
Coffee
Break
10:45
– 11:45 Africans in
Connecticut: A Closer Look at Slavery in the State
What
story does the historical evidence reveal?
A panel discussion.
Jennifer
Wood-Nangombe, Yale African American
Studies Department, authority on Venture Smith
Katherine Harris, Connecticut’s Black Governors
Dr.
Robert P. Forbes, Associate
Director, Gilder Lehrman Center, Moderator
11:45 – 1:00 LUNCH
1:00 – 2:15 400 Years of Slavery: A Context
A
synopsis of the history and evolution of the Transatlantic Slave Trade,
touching on the degree of control of the U.S. government by slaveholders.
Dr.
David Brion Davis, Director, Gilder
Lehrman Center
The
Crucial Decade: Slavery and Politics in the 1850’s
Discussion
of the crises and contradictions that led to the Civil War and the subsequent
demise of slavery.
Dr.
James O. Horton, Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and
History at George Washington University.
2:15
– 2:30 Break
2:30 – 3:45 The Roots of Personal History:
Family Perspectives of the New England Slave Trade
Turning the camera on
herself, producer/director Katrina Browne investigates her wealthy New England ancestors who were the largest
slave-trading family in early America. Brown retraces the Triangle Trade route
from Rhode Island, Ghana, and Cuba to uncover a nation's hidden past and
grapple with the contemporary legacy of slavery.
Katrina Browne, documentary filmmaker.
3:45
– 4:00 Wrap-Up
and Evaluation
Evening
Events
4:00 – 5:00 Walking
Tour of Amistad Sites of Memory
Kate Walton, Tour Leader
for general participants.
5:00 Buses leave from Luce Hall
and City Hall for Schooner Amistad at Long Wharf
5:30 – 8:30 Reception
aboard the Freedom Schooner Amistad in New Haven Harbor for pre-registered
Core Teams
Friday, July 26
8:00
– 10:00 am Continental
Breakfast available (Luce Hall)
Working
Session for TST Core Team Members
8:30 – 10:00 OPEN
SESSION FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS
A survey of
curriculum and creative instructional approaches developed for
introducing the Amistad Incident
(a local Connecticut story with international implications) into classroom
instruction.
Andrea Leiser, Education Director,
Amistad America
Paul Esposito, 8th Grade
Social Studies, Newtown Middle School
EASTERN CONNECTICUT VISIT
10:00 – 10:15 Trip Overview: Dr. Robert
P. Forbes, Associate
Director, the Gilder Lehrman Center
10:15
– 10:30 Boarding the
bus
Noon
– 1:00 Lunch--First
Congregational Church, Canterbury
1:00 - 1:45 Family
Memory of Resistance and Survival
Determined to find her family’s roots in slavery,
Pearl Duncan followed a trail of family stories and nicknames, slave ship
records, and DNA typing in a journey of discovery that led her to relatives in
Ghana and among the Jamaican Maroons.
Pearl Duncan, Author and Genealogist
1:45 – 2:30 Tour
of Prudence Crandall Museum
A visit to the
school for “little Misses and young ladies of color” that prompted a notorious
Connecticut law barring the teaching of blacks from out of state. Tragically, the school is slated to be shut
down by the Connecticut General Assembly once again, because of budget cutbacks
that are forcing the closing of all of Connecticut’s state history
museums.
2:45
– 3:15 First
Unitarian Church, Brooklyn
Plantation Slavery in Connecticut: The Archeological
Evidence
Jerry Sawyer, archeologist at the City
University of New York and New Salem Plantation excavation site coordinator,
discusses the presence of large-scale slavery in 18th-century
Connecticut, including the New Salem plantation site excavation.
3:15 – 3:45 African
American Life in 19th-Century Connecticut
Dr. Peter Hinks, Professor of African
American Studies at Hamilton College, explores race relations in early
Connecticut, with a focus on the eastern section.
4:00
– 4:30 Afternoon
Tea Stop—Friendship’s Valley, Brooklyn
In its current incarnation,
this house serves as a local Brooklyn Bed & Breakfast. However, in the 19th
century, “Friendship’s Valley” served as a haven for abolitionists in eastern
Connecticut as the home of George Benson and his sister Helen, who married William Lloyd Garrison in its parlor
in 1834. We will be joined by Lloyd and
Helen’s great-great-great grandson, Frank
Garrison.
4:30 Board
bus for return to Yale Campus
Evening
Event: Dinner and Discussion
.
6:00 – 8:30 U.S.
Slavery in Transatlantic Perspective
Dr. Stanley Engerman, Professor of Economics,
University of Rochester
The author of Time
on the Cross discusses the place of
American slavery in the global context of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Saturday, July 27
8:00 – 10:00 am Continental Breakfast
available (Luce Hall)
Working Session for TST
Core Team Members
8:30
– 10:00 OPEN
SESSION FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS
Tapping
the Potential of The Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project
A brainstorming forum led by school administrators
affiliated with the U.S. Partnership
Dr. Gail
Nordmoe, Assistant Superintendent,
New London Public Schools
Mr. Willie
Freeman, Supervisor for the Social
Studies, New Haven Public Schools
Mr. Herman
Davenport, Coordinator of Social
Studies, Norwalk Public Schools
WESTERN CONNECTICUT VISIT
10:00 – 10:15 Trip Overview: Dr. Robert
P. Forbes, Associate
Director, the Gilder Lehrman Center
10:15
– 10:30 Boarding the
bus
Noon –12:45 Lunch at Beecher House
Society, Litchfield
Chandler Saint, Founder/Director
Catered
lunch at Benjamin Tallmadge House, home of Washington’s secret service chief
and the man who brought the Rev. Lyman Beecher to Litchfield. Harriet Beecher Stowe and four siblings were
born in the Beecher House,
1:15 – 2:15 Litchfield History Museum & Tapping Reeve
Law School
Becky Martin, Education Coordinator, discusses Litchfield’s slavery-era prominence and its
reinvention of its colonial past in the late 19th-early 20th-century
era of immigration.
2:30 – 3:30 TheGunnery
School, Washington
Archivist Paula Krimsky addresses the
abolitionist movement in the area highlighting the involvement of the school’s
founder, Frederick Gunn.
3:30 Board
bus for return to Yale Campus
Evening
Event: Dinner and Discussion
.
6:00
– 7:30 Plenary Session
Conference summary
Review
of next phase of project
Final conclusions / recommendations / Follow up
8:00
– 9:30 Paul
Hammer presents
Norman Thomas Marshall
in his one-man show,
Trumpet
of Freedom: The Saga
of John
Brown
Sunday, July 28
Breakfast
on your own
NORTH CENTRAL CONNECTICUT VISIT
10:00
– 10:15 Trip Overview
Dr.
Robert P. Forbes, Associate Director, the Gilder Lehrman Center
10:15
– 10:30 Boarding the
bus
11:45
– 12:30 Box Lunch –
Northwest Park Nature Center
12:30
– 1:30 The Tobacco
Industry in the Nutmeg State: A
Hands-On History Lesson
Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum, Windsor
Marion
M. Nielsen, curator
1:45
– 2:30 Ellsworth
Homestead, Windsor
Home
of Oliver Ellsworth, one of the framers of the United States Constitution,
Connecticut's first Senator, and co-author of the constitutional compromises
that convinced the slave-belt states to
enter the Union.
2:45
– 3:00 Nancy
Toney gravesite, Palisado Cemetery, Windsor
3:15
– 3:30 Departure
stop at Bradley Airport
Return
to Yale campus