City’s ​“America 250” Commission Debuts

How about staging re-enactments, including of the invasion and sacking of New Haven by thousands of British redcoats on July 4 and 5 in 1779?

Or creating a quilt, perhaps in the style of the textiles that slaves used to communicate with each other in the antebellum South, but one that reflects all the wards, neighborhoods, and wave after wave of immigrants who make up New Haven history?

But above all engage the community.

Those are some of the ideas percolating among the newly appointed members of the city’s America 250 Commission.

Mayor Justin Elicker has assembled the group and charged it with guiding the planning, community engagement, and celebration of the upcoming semiquincentennial (make that 250th year) anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and the founding of our country. 

Nine of the 17 commissioners — including co-chairs City Historian Michael Morand and Kim Futrell, who helms the city’s Department of Arts, Culture & Tourism — gathered on Zoom Tuesday for their inaugural meeting.

The commission includes representatives from schools public and private, the library, and business and civic organizations. The full list is at the end of this article. 

In the city’s press release issued after the meeting, on Wednesday morning, Elicker wrote: ​“We have made so much progress as a nation over the last 250 years, yet much work remains as we find our democracy at a critical, fragile, and defining moment.”

Morand, who is also Director of Community Engagement for Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, added in that same press release: ​“In 2026, with the Declaration on view [at the Beinecke Library], we can pledge anew our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor for the future of this living nation.”

Although the Independent did not attend the Zoom meeting, here are a few highlights from brief post-meeting interviews with several commissioners. All were excited about the project, proud to have been selected, and all emphatic about the importance of engaging the community in the plans and celebration.

This reporter also asked each what’s the one single step that can be taken, on this occasion of the semiquincentennial, to advance toward the Constitution’s aspiration ​“to form a more perfect union.”

Dixwell’s long-time Ward 22 Alder Jeanette Morrison said that one issue emerging from the meeting was to have something tangible, that might be, for example, a quilt, hung up in City Hall after the end of the celebration. ​“Something tangible, lasting, and meaningful that sends a message that there’s so much to us. We’re the ​‘model city,’” she said, ​“and when you think of 1776, we have demonstrated that.”

As to what might get us, during the celebrations, a little closer to a more perfect union, she replied: ​“Ongoing communication between all of us. Because when we talk to one another, you learn and you find out that we’re more alike than different.”

The mayor’s liaison to the Board of Alders, Alex Guzhnay, is at 23 the youngest member of the commission. He characterized the group proudly as ​“emblematic” of what America at 250 should be. ​“New Haven is often making history and setting new standards. I think about my own background coming from Ecuadorian immigrants and New Haven’s immigrant history, whether we’ve been here one year or ten or 20, it should be reflected. In Fair Haven, where I grew up, it was a haven for Italian, German, and Polish immigrants, and from other parts of Europe, and telling all those stories is important.”

Susan Weisselberg worked for years as counsel for House Democrats in Hartford and during the aughts she coordinated the city’s $1.5 billion school construction program. ​“I love New Haven,” she said, ​“all its rich history that covers so many stories and we should include as many as we can. The past informs the present and shapes the future. This is such an opportunity. When I did school construction, one of the things I loved was hearing the history of each of the neighborhoods. How do you include all that? I don’t know yet.”

As to what might move us toward a more perfect union in 2026, Weisselberg added, ​“Part of our conversation at the meeting was civics, people understanding civics and civics engagement. How we work for each other and respect each other is an important piece leading to a more perfect union.”

And in an email comment sent to the Independent, City Librarian Maria Bernhey wrote that she is excited about launching, in a partnership with the Beinecke Library, ​“community memory labs” within the NHFPL. These projects, she said, would ” support residents in preserving their personal, family and organizational archives through digitization tools and workshops.”

“The timing of this launch aligns well with the work of the America 250 Commission,” she continued, ​“as we explore ways to not only highlight the history of the last 250 years, but also to uplift the important stories that have shaped our city and contributed to the community we are today.”

Here’s the alphabetical list of the America 250 commissioners:

Maria Bernhey, City Librarian at the New Haven Free Public Library

Ned Blackhawk, Professor of history at Yale University

Darryl Huckaby, Director of Programming at WYBC-FM

Erik Clemons, CEO of ConnCORP

Clifton Graves, Jr., former probate judge and Program Director of Project Fresh Start

Will Ginsberg, former president and CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven

Alex Guzhnay, liaison to the Board of Alders

Marie McDaniel, chair of history at Southern Connecticut State 

Jeannette Morrison, Ward 22 Alder

Madeline Negrón, superintendent of New Haven Public Schools

Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, publisher at La Voz Hispana de CT

Len Suzio, president of Suzio York Hill Companies

Ken Suzuki, secretary treasurer at Local34, Unite HERE

Charles E. Warner, Jr., chair of the Connecticut Freedom Trail

Sue Weisselberg, board secretary of the New Haven Museum

The group’s next scheduled meeting is June 24.

It’s a large committee, conceded Guzhnay, and while that can pose a problem, not so here, he said. ​“The more cooks in the kitchen will be really productive and reflective of our community.”