Black History

New Haven, Yale, and Slavery: The Real Story

by | Mar 13, 2024 11:02 am | Comments (29)

A New Haven-made carriage popular among Southern slave owners.

William Grimes escaped slavery on a ship from Savannah to New York, then walked to Connecticut. He published his autobiography months after he purchased his freedom.

(Opinion) Inside the New Haven Museum, I asked the greeter at the front desk about the reaction of visitors to the new exhibition. 

Many are shocked,” she said. They had no idea.” 

The exhibit, Shining a Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery,” shows how the Elm City profited from America’s greatest shame, even depended on it, and when a chance came to right a wrong its leaders disgraced themselves further.

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Cigars, Cupcakes & Lemonade: Black Entrepreneurship On Display

by | Mar 6, 2024 12:30 pm | Comments (0)

Lisa Reisman Photo

Hip-hop superstar Jadakiss joins the party.

Quick: Name the New Haven location where a platinum-selling Grammy-nominated hip hop superstar and coffee entrepreneur joined an award-winning cupcake maker, an up-and-coming cigar collective, and a community-minded lemonade company.

That was Dwight Street’s Cambria Hotel last week, where area entrepreneurs showcased their wares before 100 people in a coffee-tasting event featuring Kiss Cafe and sponsored by Gorilla Lemonade in celebration of Black History Month.

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Living Black History Today: 2 Leaders Look Back, To The Present

by | Feb 29, 2024 4:21 pm | Comments (8)

Honda Smith and Diane X. Brown.

Diane X. Brown and Honda Smith grew up two blocks from each other in Newhallville during the 1960s and 1970s in families steeped in politics and a New Haven pulsing with the Black Panthers, racial unrest, and a burgeoning sense of possibility. 

Brown, 66, became the first African American librarian in New Haven in 2006, transforming the Stetson branch into a thriving community and cultural hub. Smith, 59, a retired city public works employee and longtime civic activist, took the reins as West Hills alder in 2020 upon her retirement from a three-decade career working for the city government. She’s known for, among other initiatives, The Shack, which she revitalized into a thriving intergenerational community center on Valley Street. 

The Independent sat down with Brown and Smith at The Shack to get their takes on observing Black History Month in 2024 New Haven. 

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BOMUS Students See Black History Made

by | Feb 23, 2024 9:27 am | Comments (2)

Maya McFadden Photo

BOMUS leaders and panelists Melanie Thomas, Dondi José Burroughs Sr, Gary Winfield, Shante Teel-Williams, Alisha Crutchfield-McLean, Gary Highsmith, and Jamie Baker-Vilsaint.

Third and fourth-grade scholars at the Barack H. Obama Magnet University School sat in an audience looking at their future selves through the lens of a business owner, health professional, schools superintendent, state senator, and a motivational speaker/author.

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“A Dixwell Daughter": Q House Unveils Constance Baker Motley Forever Stamp

by | Feb 2, 2024 12:45 pm | Comments (20)

Yash Roy Photos

NAACP New Haven President Dori Dumas and Motley's niece Constance Royster unveil the stamp at Q House event.

Judge Constance Baker Motley was the only woman to work at the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund during the Civil Rights Movement. She wrote the original complaint in Brown v. Board of Education. She was Martin Luther King Jr.’s lawyer. She was the first Black woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and she fought nine more desegregation cases, winning every single one. 

She was a daughter of New Haven. She was a daughter of Dixwell. She was a daughter of the Q House. 

Now she joins King, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and Thurgood Marshall on a U.S. Postal Service Forever stamp.

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Love March Sparks Civil Rights Revelation

by | Jan 15, 2024 3:24 pm | Comments (26)

Jamil Ragland Photo

At the MLK Love March Monday in the Goatville neighborhood.

As a practicing agnostic, I’ve often wondered why the Civil Rights Movement began in the church. Christianity has always seemed antithetical to Black liberation to me. After all, this is the white man’s religion, with a white Jesus foisted upon our people during the degradation of slavery. I’ve resented my people’s devotion to a God we wouldn’t even know if not for our conquest. 

This question was cycling through my mind when I stepped off with the members and supporters of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church for their 54th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Love March through the streets of East Rock, the state’s longest-running celebration of Dr. King’s life and achievements.

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How They Dialed In To The Middle Class

by | Dec 13, 2023 12:15 pm | Comments (6)

Jeanne Newman photo

Past and present SNET/Frontier employees, at the 4 Hamilton St. garage. Back row: Charles Nixon, Tommy Joyner, Earl McCoy Sr., Webster Zackery. Front row: James Jones, Rodney Diggs, Edward McClain, Jermaine Allen.

Earl McCoy, Sr. grabbed a rung on the phone company ladder, lifting other Black New Haveners along with him into lives of stable employment at a livable wage.

He and other SNET legends” connected offline to reflect on that journey, and where it’s headed today.

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Author Meetup Explores "The Other Side Of Yet"

by | Oct 5, 2023 10:00 pm | Comments (0)

Contributed photo

At the Sept. 29 New Haven Museum meetup, with author Michelle Hord.

The following photos were submitted by Links member Sheila Carmon about a Sept. 29 book signing and meet and greet with Daytime Emmy Award winner, author, and media executive Michelle Hord. The event was organized by the New Haven chapter of The Links, Incorporated.

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Goldenberg Swings For Support At Black Golf Club

by | Oct 5, 2023 8:46 am | Comments (15)

Thomas Breen photo

Mayoral hopeful Tom Goldenberg with Knickerbocker regular Willie Holmes and club Vice President Patty Newton-Foster.

The Knickerbocker's castle-like clubhouse at 715 Sherman Pkwy.

Willie Holmes stepped into the Knickerbocker on Wednesday night for the same reason that he’s been showing up to the Newhallville African American golf club’s events for the past 75 years: to relax with friends, talk about the pleasures of golf and the state of Black New Haven, grab a drink, and mix it up with local political power players and those looking to join their ranks.

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Armory Added To CT Freedom Trail

by | Oct 2, 2023 8:45 am | Comments (13)

John T. Hill photo

On the Green, 1970.

Thousands of National Guardsmen gathered in the Goffe Street Armory, weapons of war in hand as they prepared to confront anti-war activists and Black Panther trial protesters on the Green.

But unlike at Kent State and Jackson State just a few days later, in New Haven, that violence didn’t come. A conspiracy” of town and gown, Black and white, local and national players prevailed. The peace was kept, for the most part.

Fifty-three years later, the Armory — used as the National Guard’s staging ground for the May Day rally of 1970, a potential wellspring for bloodshed on that tumultuous day — was commemorated instead as a city landmark of the civil rights movement.

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Noir Vintage & Co. Time Travels Downtown

by | Aug 7, 2023 12:40 pm | Comments (2)

Laura Glesby photos

Entrepreneur and stylist Kim Poole browses Noir Vintage & Co.'s back room.

Meanwhile, store owner Evelyn Massey, right, hugs supporters in a burst of emotion.

With the snip of a ribbon, Evelyn Massey opened up a portal through time in the form of a vintage shop styled after a Harlem Renaissance salon, the culmination of a long-simmering dream.

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Beinecke Readings Examine Freedom From All Angles

by | Jul 6, 2023 9:10 am | Comments (5)

Eleanor Polak Photos

Original printing of the Declaration of Independence.

Eleanor Polak Photos

Exhibit on Frederick Douglass, William Grimes, and the Declaration of Sentiments at the Beinecke.

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds one of 26 known surviving copies of the first printing of the Declaration of Independence. The document, printed by John Dunlap in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, has a single typographical error, an indication that the founders issued it in a hurry to declare independence from England. 

On Wednesday, a few dozen New Haveners got to hear the words of that revolutionary broadside read aloud — along with that of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 oration What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” — as part of an annual primary-source-focused tradition to celebrate the 247th anniversary of Independence Day.

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Debate Q: How To Fight White Supremacy

by | Jul 3, 2023 12:08 pm | Comments (76)

Thomas Breen photo

Remidy Shareef: White supremacy "is the root cause of all of our problems here in America."

Call out exclusionary suburbs. Stand up for undocumented immigrants. Help boost Black small-business contractors. And always speak truth to power.”

New Haven’s four Democratic candidates for mayor offered those responses when asked on the debate stage about what they have done and will do to combat systemic racial prejudices that benefit people who are white and harm those who are not.

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Demolition Draws Near For Dixwell Plaza Redev

by | Jun 22, 2023 4:32 pm | Comments (11)

Dixwell Plaza's planned new ConnCAT Place redevelopment.

A demolition notice outside the Elks' former home at 87 Webster St.

Dixwell Plaza’s redevelopers plan to start knocking down vacant buildings in the mid-century shopping plaza as soon as September — as they move forward with a years-in-the-making effort to build up the heart of New Haven’s historic Black neighborhood.

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From Galveston In 1865 To Wexler-Grant In 2023

by | Jun 19, 2023 12:29 pm | Comments (1)

Kian Ahmadi photo

Drummers Michael Mills and bandmates Brian Jarawa Gray and Paul McGuire on Saturday.

One hundred and fifty eight years ago today, Joseph Sills of the 29th Connecticut Colored Infantry Regiment watched as Major General Gordon Granger proclaimed all enslaved African Americans free in Galveston, Tex. 

On Saturday, Sills’s direct descendent, Kelly Mero, helped honor her ancestor and the historic episode of Black freedom he participated in through a Juneteenth celebration she organized in the Dixwell neighborhood.

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ConnCORP Celebrates Juneteenth Anniversary

by | Jun 19, 2023 8:40 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery photo

Myles Tripp and Elaine Roper — ConnCORP’s director of audience development and vice president of culture and community relations, respectively — were on the stage at ConnCORP Saturday evening hyping up the crowd. The immediate reason was a raffle; the larger reason was the celebration of two events: the holiday of Juneteenth and ConnCORP’s fifth anniversary as an organization.

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41 High-Schoolers LEAP Into College Tour

by | Apr 28, 2023 2:35 pm | Comments (2)

Contributed photo

LEAP counselors in front of the Howard University bookstore.

The following writeup was submitted by Leadership, Education, Athletics in Partnership Inc. (LEAP) Communications Coordinator Nicole Jefferson, with excerpts from LEAP counselors, about a college tour of D.C. and Georgia recently led by the local youth services nonprofit.

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Tracing The Roots Of Bomba

by | Apr 27, 2023 9:04 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery photos

On San Juan's bustling Calle Elisa Cerra.

In Castor and Raúl Ayala's showroom in Loíza.

San Juan, Puerto Rico — Four men with frame drums gathered in front of the microphones set up on Calle Elisa Cerra. They turned up the volume, hit their instruments hard, and sang, and plena was suddenly rocking the block. 

Esquina El Watusi, one of three busy bars at the intersection, turned its music off. The DJ that had been playing pop music among the street vendors sounded far away. And a crowd made a semi-circle to listen, sing along, and cheer.

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Biz Student Seeks To Rename Whitney Ave

by | Mar 10, 2023 11:23 am | Comments (34)

Ainissa Ramirez file photo

Edward Bouchet, as painted on Henry St. by artist Kwadwo Adae.

Robert Lucas: "My main point is rethinking Eli Whitney."

Should Whitney Avenue hold onto the name of the cotton-gin inventor who played a key role in the expansion of slavery? 

Not according to a Yale business student, who’s pointed to the university’s first African American doctorate holder as an alternative namesake for the East Rock corridor.

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