Witness to History: Slavery in Guilford

11/11/2022

Please join us Thursday, Nov 17th at 7pm for the first talk in this lectures series co-sponsored by the Guilford Free Library and the Witness to History: Slavery in Guilford Project. The focus of this session will be Connecticut's laws pertaining to slavery, and the talk will be given by Guilford resident, Cornelia Bewersdorf, who has studied law in both Germany and Connecticut.

Connie will highlight and examine Connecticut’s long legal engagement with slavery. She looks at more than 200 years of laws. She examines the laws legalizing and regulating slavery and then the long journey and hurdles the state faced in outlawing it. Her survey begins in 1643 and ends in 1848 when Connecticut formally ended slavery.

https://www.guilfordfreelibrary.org/witness-to-history-slavery-in-guilford-webinar/46351/

Please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_aSXpYu7lQy64ERRJDNNtRg

Connecticut’s laws pertaining to slavery will be the focus of the first talk in this year’s lectures co-sponsored by the library and Witness to History, Slavery in Guilford Project. The talk will be given by Guilford resident, Cornelia Bewersdorf, who has studied law in both Germany and Connecti...

10/26/2021

Anti-slavery wasn't formalized on the Yale campus until sometime in the late 1850's, despite the fact that a few important abolitionists did have Yale connections.

In this talk, Bennet Parten will discuss the university's relationship to slavery and abolitionism, and show how campus debate evolved in the lead-up to the Civil War.

**Registration is required** Please sign up at www.guilfordfreelibrary.org or call 203.453.8282. Once registered, you will receive an email link to join the Zoom webinar.

10/26/2021

Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
The MacMillan Center at Yale University
23rd Annual Conference
Yale and Slavery in Historical Perspective
Oct. 28-30, 2021 | Yale University, New Haven, CT

The conference will be conducted remotely. REGISTER HERE: https://tinyurl.com/38nfsj4m

Commissioned by President Peter Salovey, a working group of historians, librarians, student researchers, and community members is conducting a thorough research study of Yale University’s historical relationships with slavery, racism, and their aftermaths. On October 28-30, 2021 the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at the MacMillan Center at Yale will host a conference on “Yale and Slavery in Historical Perspective,” presenting the research findings in process.

Topics will include the university’s 18th century theological roots, the economics of slavery-created wealth, the place of Southern slaveholders at Yale, medical and scientific legacies of race at Yale, forces of abolition at the university, the labor history of the building of the institution over three centuries, and Yale’s extraordinary reconciliationist Civil War memorial, dedicated in 1915. The conference will engage the Yale and New Haven communities as well as the national context of reckoning with the past.

Email comments & questions regarding this conference to [email protected]

Commissioned by President Peter Salovey, a working group of historians, librarians, student researchers, and community members is conducting a thorough research study of Yale University’s historical relationships with slavery, racism, and their aftermaths. On October 28-30, 2021 the Gilder Lehrman...

09/29/2021

In the 18th century, slave-trading and slave-owning rose dramatically in New England and was much a part of life as possessing carriages, fine clothes and tea sets, according to Dr. Ken Minkema of Yale University’s Jonathan Edwards Center. He will put that history in perspective on Tuesday, 5 October, when he speaks about “Religion, Race and Slavery in Colonial New England” via the Guilford Free Library’s zoom service.

The talk begins at 7 pm and is free and open to the public, but prior registration is required.
The talk is co-sponsored by the library and the Witness to History: Slavery in Guilford Initiative. Registration is through the Guilford Free Library: https://www.guilfordfreelibrary.org/religion-race-and-slavery-in-colonial-new-england-with-dr-ken-minkema/43535/

07/20/2021

"In a new political low in Texas, the Republican-dominated state Senate has passed a bill to eliminate a requirement that public schools teach that the Ku Klux Klan and its white supremacist campaign of terror are “morally wrong.”

The cut is among some two dozen curriculum requirements dropped in the measure, along with studying Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the works of United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez, Susan B. Anthony’s writings about the women’s suffragist movement, and Native American history.

Senate Bill 3 — passed last Friday 18-4 — drops most mentions of people of color and women from the state’s required curriculum.

Eliminated requirements also include the writings of Martin Luther King Jr., United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez and suffragist Susan B. Anthony.

06/20/2021

To Christopher Rufo, a term for a school of legal scholarship looked like “the perfect weapon.”

05/10/2021

Oral History and the African American Experience
with Tamara Lanier

Thursday, May 20 at 7 pm
Hear Tamara Lanier explain how buying a salad at an ice cream store and a promise to her dying mother led to the discovery that Harvard University possessed images of her enslaved great, great, great grandfather Renty Taylor and his daughter, Delia. Learn how oral history, research and luck led to the discovery and how the discovery has led to a landmark lawsuit against Harvard over who owns the record of past injustices and whether past injustices are irrelevant in respect to ownership.

This virtual talk is the final program in a four-part series sponsored by Witness to History: Slavery in Guilford. The initiative seeks to uncover the local history of slavery, examine its legacy and share with town residents what it finds.

Registration is required. www.guilfordfreelibrary.org
Once registered, you will receive an email with the link to join the webinar.

05/09/2021

Thursday, May 13 at 7pm EDT - Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and The Mark Twain House & Museum are proud to co-present Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs in conversation with YWCA Hartford Region's Melinda L. Johnson discussing THE THREE MOTHERS: HOW THE MOTHERS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., MALCOLM X AND JAMES BALDWIN SHAPED A NATION. Join us for this FREE and enlightening book discussion by registering here: https://marktwainhouse.org/event/the-three-mothers-anna-tubbs/