Lucretia Gets Her Corner

Great!!!! We got Lecretia!

Now, how about Constance Baker Motley the nation's first African American woman to serve as a federal judge?

Doesn't she deserve a historical remberance too?

Great story. The woman singing is Pastor Trina Greene of New Antioch Church of God! She did an amazing job as usual!!!

It's possible that she could get a street named in her honor, but unfortunately her last name was not even known.. but this is great news and something good to see happen as away of showing homage and appreciation for Black History.

Lucretia Gets Her Corner

Are you kidding.She was a slave.She work in the Big house.She died a slave.Did she try to fight to free her people, Like the Reverend, the Prophet, Nat Turner who brilliantly merged the religious with the political,To free the slaves and fought get the slave master off of all of our necks?But he was sold out by a Judas Goat.Did she organize thousands of slaves who pledged to participate in his planned insurrection like Denmark Vesey?Who also was sold out by a Judas Goat.

At the naming ceremony, Mayor Justin Elicker and Downtown/East Rock Alder Eli Sabin emphasized the importance of remembering the city’s history, including the fact that slavery existed here, as well as recognizing the social justice work left to be done.

Mayor Justin Elicker? Are you kidding.The mayor reminds me of one of those Georgia Plantations owners.I wonder how many slaves his peeps had?

. Those helpers included Trina Greene (pictured), who belted out a rendition of Sam Cooke’s ​“A Change Is Gonna Come” as part of the ceremony. She ended with a riff on the chorus: ​“It’s been a long time coming / But a change has come …”

The slaves I know in history would have been singing this song.

"Happy As A Runaway Slave" by Mighty Mo Rodgers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oKh99KBqJ4

THREEFIFTHS My comment wasn't posted. I'm glad you said something.

“We don’t know Lucretia’s last name.”
“She was married to a fellow enslaved person named John Cram.”

These two sentences in the same article are confusing. Why isn't her last name Mrs. Cram? Or is the Independent kowtowing to the Slavers’ racist tradition of refusing to call an African woman held hostage on American soil “Mrs.”?

Someone Please Explain.

Samuel T. Ross-Lee

ThreeFifths, a bit of context. Turner lived in the early 19th century. Lucretia lived two centuries earlier, in a society that was, if anything, more patriarchal. CT’s population at the time was about 1,500, a tiny fraction of whom were black. At the time of Turner’s rebellion, there were over 400,000 enslaved people in Virginia.

There are thousands of street corners in town. Naming one for the city’s first black resident does not preclude naming others for Turner or other historically significant individuals.

We should be honoring the people who were survivors of the evils of slavery. We should not hold it against them just because we don’t know what they may have done to rebel against the system of slavery.
I’m sure Ms Lucretia would have been pleased that she was finally being recognized by society as a human being who contributed to society despite being exploited by it.
Ms Lucretia was married, and the respect of a title like Mrs/Miss/Ms or Mr is sometimes left off a person of African Descent’s name when addressing them, out of disrespect for them.
But Mrs is a title that used to indicate that once married, you were now property of your husband. Nowadays women have a choice as to whether or not to take the title indicating they are married or last name of their spouse.
I would think that at least Ms is a more neutral and respectful title, not knowing how she felt about it.
And if she was born in Africa, then her real birth name was most likely not Lucretia, and we don’t know what her real name was, nor the family name, or if there was even a last name at all. After all, last names didn’t exist until relatively recently in human history, and many were simply names of their tribe or occupation or village or whose child they were, and there are still some parts of the world where last names still don’t exist.
I’m glad New Haven is honoring a woman who once forgotten, and treated as “less than,” at the location where she worked and lived, for her life and contributions to our history.

Heather C.
Feb 28, 2023 3:07 pm

We should be honoring the people who were survivors of the evils of slavery. We should not hold it against them just because we don’t know what they may have done to rebel against the system of slavery.

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King Jr.,
"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." --Martin Luther King Jr


“I'd rather be a free man in my grave, than to live life as a puppet or a slave”

― Jimmy Cliff

Mr. Ross-Lee, we simply do not know how this person referred to herself or how others referred to her. In the 17th century, the last names of indentured servants, too, was often unrecorded. (I’m talking about record-keeping; indentured servitude was fundamentally different from slavery.)

ThreeFifths, your first comment implicitly criticizes Lucretia for not rebelling against slavery (“did she try to free her people?”). As if if that was a plausible option for a woman in 17th century Connecticut. And she didn’t work in the “big house”. The New Haven structures of that time were little more than cabins. The article refers to the Theophilus Eaton “estate” which more or less corresponds to the parking lot next to the Union Trust building (two standard building lots).

ThreeFifths, faulting a woman in early 17th century CT for failing to rebel against slavery, at a time when the entire enslaved population in the state could have easily fit in my bedroom, is ludicrous. Like many other educated people, you do not have a sense of numbers. When Turner led his rebellion, there were hundreds of thousands of enslaved people in Virginia, tens of thousands of free African Americans, and a nascent Abolition movement. None of this was true in 17th century CT.

Mr.Ross-Lee the issue isn't how others referred to her so much as how she referred to herself. We have no idea.

Mr. Ross-Lee, my wife has been married to a man named McCarthy for 40+ years. That has never been her name. If you go to colonial era cemeteries, you will regularly see gravestones of women buried with their husbands under their own last name.

We don’t know if Lucretia had a last name. If she did, we don’t whether it was Cram or Eaton - enslaved people were routinely assigned their slaveholder’s name. The latter phenomenon is echoed in present day names, including yours (Ross is originally a Scottish name).

If we knew Lucretia’s last name, it would be insulting to refer to her by her first name (your point). We don’t.

Mr. Lee-Ross, you are a braver man than I if you assume that a married woman goes by her husband's name. If there was any record of a Lucretia Cram, I'm sure that Dr. Garrett Robinson would not have referred to her by her first name.