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Maya McFadden |
Mar 9, 2023 9:04 am
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Career office clerk Shirley Love joins school choir in "Lift Every Voice and Sing," performed at Black History assembly and celebration.
Hill Regional Career High School’s auditorium rang like a rolling sea as students lifted their voices to sing the Black National Anthem alongside school staffer Shirley Love, whose voice left the school full of the hope.
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Nadir Salaam |
Mar 2, 2023 1:32 pm
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A plaque honoring the newly named Lucretia's Corner.
The following opinion essay was submitted by Nadir Salaam, who is an activist, educator, father and independent historian. He is a native of New Haven currently residing in Bellevue, Washington. He is the producer and host of the Young Adults Learning Evil podcast, which focuses on the history of systemic oppression in New Haven’s Black community. Contact Nadir at [email protected].
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 2, 2023 9:47 am
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At Celentano School's final Black History Month celebration of the year.
Eighth-grader Akiellea Gooden honored her Jamaican roots on stage in front of her Celentano School classmates by sharing a quotation from a Black political icon and historical Caribbean compatriot, Marcus Garvey: “A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”
Ex-State Sen. George Logan, with guitar and in front of picture of Mary McLeod Bethune, at Republican-organized Black History Month event.
George Logan and a handful of fellow local Republican politicos commemorated Black History Month with a live performance of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” — and with a lineup of speakers who paid tribute to the late civil rights icon and informal presidential adviser Mary McLeod Bethune.
The 6 Black Catholics under consideration for sainthood.
Featured speaker and guide Shingai Chigwedere.
There are 11 white Americans — and 0 African Americans — among the 10,000 saints recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.
“Zero Black American saints. Zero Americans-of-African-descent saints,” Shingai Chigwedere told a 20-person audience at Albertus Magnus College. “However you want to word it, there are zero.”
That number may soon change, as the local Catholic university shined a light on the six Black Catholics currently being considered for sainthood.
At Tuesday's online book talk for Revolution in Our Time.
A dive into the history of the Black Panthers once again reverberated loudly into the present — from the Black Lives Matter movement to the backlash against critical race theory to the killing of Tyre Nichols — as educators and community members gathered online to hear award-winning author Kekla Magoon talk about her new book, Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People.
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Kimberly Wipfler |
Jan 27, 2023 3:52 pm
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Kolton Harris and film student Joaquín Morales.
At Thursday's BITE kickoff.
“Who would have ever thought I’d be back in here watching a film?” asked Tracey Massey, in a hushed whisper, in the back row of a film screening at the former Stetson Branch library building in the soon-to-be-demolished Dixwell Plaza.
On the projector played “Black Joy,” a musical short film by Kolton Harris, which tells the story of a group of Black students in detention who find pride and celebration in their Blackness through song and dance.
“I came to this library 40 years ago as a child growing up in this neighborhood. It is here where we learned the first stories of Black joy. Here’s where we read books about Martin Luther King Jr., where we heard the first Michael Jackson song, the first Nina Simone song. We learned about Malcolm X. All of those stories generated out of this library.”
“It was joy. It was magic. [Harris] is reminding us of that. It was really just like it is in his film,” said Massey.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 16, 2023 12:42 pm
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Hanan Hameen of Dance and Beyond Sunday at New Haven Museum.
Through words, music, and movement, storytellers, drummers, and dancers offered dozens of families a chance to find their place in the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., the broader causes of social justice he dedicated his life to, and the rich culture he came out of.
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Allan Appel |
Jan 16, 2023 10:02 am
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Yale University Office of Public Information.
MLK with Brewster.
When the Independent first reviewed “The Kings at Yale” — an exhibition primarily of photos and letters documenting how back in 1964 Yale University, with Kingman Brewster as president (hence the fun wordplay), granted Martin Luther King Jr. an honorary degree — what caught this reporter’s eye was all the hate mail candidly on display.
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Laura Glesby |
Nov 11, 2022 9:14 am
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Steve Winter and Ann Garrett Robinson celebrate Lucretia's Corner renaming Thursday.
Four centuries after New Haven’s first recorded Black resident left her mark as an activist and enslaved domestic worker, the corner of Elm and Orange is slated to bear her name.
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Maya McFadden |
Nov 8, 2022 2:25 pm
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Some of the many guests at Saturday's gala.
Maya McFadden Photos
Links members and supporters gather to celebrate organization's 50th anniversary in 2nd floor ballroom of the New Haven Omni Hotel.
A historic Black female advocacy organization celebrated half a century of sisterhood and service at its first in-person gala since the start of the pandemic.
A headstone marking the first burial at Grove Street Cemetery in 1797.
Grove Street Friends Chair Morand: This cemetery gives New Haveners "a sense of common groundedness."
Martha Townsend was laid to rest in Grove Street Cemetery 225 years ago this fall — becoming the first person to be interred in downtown’s foliage-dappled, history-rich burial ground.
Since then, thousands of notable New Haveners have joined her. They have left behind wisdom of the ages that remains relevant today.
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Allan Appel |
Oct 31, 2022 9:52 am
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The late Winfred Rembert at his Newhall St. home.
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Prof. Erin I. Kelly with Rembert book and art on Thursday.
His tale of triumph through art, grit, and love in Georgia’s 1960s cotton fields, including seven years on a chain gang and a near lynching, is already taught at Yale — and well might become required reading in high schools and colleges throughout the country.
And a major motion picture should also be a consideration to get the story out far and wide.
Attorney Mike Jefferson and author Nicholas Dawidoff in conversation at Stetson event Wednesday evening.
When Flemming “Nick” Norcott Jr. was growing up in the Dwight/Kensington neighborhood in the 1940s and ’50s, Prospect Hill wasn’t the only “other side” of town that was off limits to Black families like his.
“There were a lot of ‘other sides’ then,” the retired former state Supreme Court justice remembered at a Wednesday evening book talk. “As a young boy, a pre-teen, a teen, we couldn’t go to Westville. We couldn’t go to Morris Cove. We couldn’t go to Wooster Square, because there would be consequences that would be really, really bad.”
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Allan Appel |
Oct 24, 2022 12:47 pm
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Probate Court Judge Graves (right) with Charles Warner Jr. and Crawford's portrait.
Without him, said retired state Supreme Court Justice Flemming Norcott, Jr., there would be no Black justices on Connecticut’s highest court — or maybe even on the Supreme Court of the United States.
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Maya McFadden |
Aug 1, 2022 9:36 am
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Dixwell UCC bicentennial planning committee members Joy W. Donaldson, Antonie Thorp, Estelle Whitfield Simpson, Clifton Graves Jr., Althea Musgrove Norcott, Helena Rogers, and Cheryl Gray.
The nation’s oldest African American United Congregational Church is celebrating 200 years of being rooted in community service, social justice, and humanitarian efforts.
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Thomas Breen |
Jul 6, 2022 11:46 am
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Carte-de-visite images of Frederick Douglass, from 1860 and 1865.
Local readers at the Beinecke on Tuesday: George Miles, Charles Warner Jr., Babz Rawls-Ivy, Dee Marshall, Trina Lucky ...
... Clifton Graves Jr., Erik Clemons, and Meghan Beirne.
Clifton Graves Jr.‘s voice boomed throughout the cavernous, marble-enclosed library — his eyes locked with the audience’s, his right hand raised in admonition, his words traveling 170 years from past to present.
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” he asked. “I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”
As men in dark blue uniforms marched with muskets through Grove Street Cemetery, Calvin Alexander Ramsey took a headstone tour, revived the memory of a Revolutionary War soldier named John Epps — and spoke of plans to bring his own history of Black patriotism to a city stage.
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Jordan Ashby |
Jun 19, 2022 8:05 pm
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Jordan Ashby Photos
Saturday night on the A&I stage on the Green: One of a weekend full of Juneteenth celebrations.
With art, dance, food, music, books, even a group bike ride, New Haven marked Juneteenth for more than three days running, with a celebratory and fighting spirit.
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Thomas Breen |
Jun 17, 2022 6:18 pm
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On Friday's canal history walking tour. Clockwise from top left: Tour guide Aaron Goode; Walking south past Yale's Benjamin Franklin College; an Escape New Haven-built diorama of the canal's early railroad years; a turtle sculpture in the Newhallville "Learning Corridor."
Aaron Goode pointed down to the 19th century trap rock retaining walls that still line the Farmington Canal Trail in Dixwell, and then up to the 21st century Yale-dorm-topping carved relief panels that pay homage to the enduring transportation corridor’s founding engineers.
“History is everywhere in New Haven,” he said, “above us and below.”
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Maya McFadden |
May 18, 2022 9:27 am
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Harp unveils mayoral portrait.
Photos with Harp were in high demand at Tuesday's portrait unveiling.
Virtuous. A leader. Unique. A powerhouse. Poised. A quiet storm. Empathetic. Committed.
Those were among the words that accompanied a joyous ceremonial unveiling and installation in City Hall of the official portrait of former Mayor Toni N. Harp.
