by | Feb 19, 2025 9:47 am | Comments (10)
John T. Hill photo
May Day 1970 rally on the Green.
Allan Appel Photo
Notes from New Haven's underground.
This coming Saturday you might think it’s Feb. 22 and only Washington’s birthday — but not if you happen also to be at the New Haven Museum, where the under-appreciated Whitney Library will be time-traveling back to May 1, 1970, the historic May Day rally on the Green and at Yale.
by | Feb 18, 2025 9:00 am | Comments (1)
Contributed Photo
Present at the ceremony, from left: Denise Morris, , VP Inclusion & Belonging, Employee & Labor Relations, Yale New Haven Health; Christopher O’Connor, CEO, Yale New Haven Health; Katherine Heilpern, President, Yale New Haven Hospital, Elissa Matthews; Kaeleigh Graham-Purdy; Janiya Greene, G. Brown Gervil; Raymond Lomax, Jr.; Ena Williams, Chief Nursing Executive, Yale New Haven Health; Jorge Rodriguez, Executive VP, Chief Ambulatory Officer, Yale New Haven Health; Pamela Sutton-Wallace, President, Yale New Haven Health and Melissa Turner, SR VP, Chief Human Resources Officer, Yale New Haven Health.
Yale New Haven Health (YNHHS) marked President’s Day by honoring five high school seniors who will receive $1,000 to help pay for their first-year college books.
Continue reading ‘5 High School Seniors Win Black History Month Book Awards’
by | Feb 11, 2025 9:45 am | Comments (2)
Author Josaphat: The Panther story needed a novelist's eye.
Kingdom of No Tomorrow
By Fabienne Josaphat
Algonquin Books/Hatchette
Nettie Boileau had choices to make.
Should she sign up with the revolution taking shape in Oakland, the way her father fought back against Papa Doc in Haiti? Or should she pursue her dreams of becoming a doctor?
Which lover should she make a life with? Clia, who brought her into the Black Panther Party? Or Melvin, the magnetic rising party leader?
by | Jan 15, 2025 12:42 pm | Comments (0)
Thomas Breen photos
Clockwise from top left: Latrice Hampton, Kathy Bridges, Wanda Faison, and Alexis Terry.
At the front of the 55th Love March.
Latrice Hampton, Kathy Bridges, Alexis Terry, and Wanda Faison gathered at a Lawrence Street Baptist Church separately but for a common purpose Wednesday — drawn by a place of worship that has been in their families for generations, called by a civil rights icon-honoring “love march” that has been in their lives for decades.
by | Oct 7, 2024 8:05 am | Comments (0)
Contributed photo
At the Q House's centennial gala.
One hundred years after the Q House first opened its doors, the reborn Dixwell community center capped a year of centenary celebrations with a fundraiser gala.
by | Aug 23, 2024 4:10 pm | Comments (47)
Laura Glesby Photo
Charles Warner, Jr.: "We would have had a different city economically, educationally, politically" with the 1831 Black college.
Warner's pin.
A resolution before the Board of Alders would issue a formal apology for the city’s actions preventing the founding of a local Black college in 1831.
Continue reading ‘City Apology Proposed For Blocking Black College’
by | Aug 7, 2024 3:32 pm | Comments (4)
Thomas Breen file photo
Black Wall Street organizers Adriane Jefferson (right), and The Breed's Rashad Johnson and Aaron Rogers: "This is not just a festival. It is a movement."
A fashion show, film festival, investing summit, and 200-vendor fair on the Green are all on tap for this year’s third annual Black Wall Street – an example of city staff and local entrepreneurs teaming up to “turn the hate from the past into hope for the future.”
by | Jul 16, 2024 9:12 am | Comments (4)
Stephanie townsend photos
Milton Collins: Now 100, doesn't look “a day over 80.”
As guests entered Milton “Uncle Chip” Collins’s 100th birthday party at Amarante’s Sea Cliff, they might have had trouble distinguishing the World War II vet, beloved New Havener, aesthete, and now centenarian from a crowd of dancers. However, Collins could be found by the band, grooving along to swanky jazz.
by | Jun 19, 2024 5:57 pm | Comments (5)
Jabez Choi photo
At Dixwell UCC's Juneteenth service on Wednesday.
At a Juneteenth worship service on Dixwell Avenue Wednesday morning, Yale Divinity School Associate Professor Clifton Granby asked: “Has freedom really settled in?”
by | Jun 4, 2024 8:57 am | Comments (3)
Asher Joseph photo
Otis Johnson, Alder Morrison, Henry Fernandez, and Victoria Stewart at Q House plaza's rededication ceremony.
“I didn’t know your grandfather did all that,” a friend told Victoria Stewart on Thursday evening at the newly rededicated Daniel Y. Stewart Plaza at 197 Dixwell Ave, where a lightbox featuring infographics and images taken by Daniel Stewart is set to be installed to commemorate his legacy.
Continue reading ‘Outside Q House, Call It Daniel Y. Stewart Plaza’
by | Jun 3, 2024 12:41 pm | Comments (3)
At the Freddy on Sunday: Cross's marching band ...
... and TVE Dance Studio ...
Abiba Biao Photos
... with outgoing parade organizers Petisia Adger and Diane Brown.
Dixwell Avenue burst to life in the Sunday afternoon heat as nearly 80 marching units, drill teams, bands and businesses joined politicians and city representatives for two hours of music, dancing and remembering neighborhood roots.
Continue reading ‘Freddy Fills Dixwell With Drums, Dance, Pride’
by | Jun 3, 2024 10:56 am | Comments (4)
Allan Appel Photo
John Mills with Marinda Monfilston, Lakeisha Robinson, and Shawana Snell.
Presentation Slide
Members of a Woodbury, New Jersey family had not a clue that their direct ancestor was a soldier in the storied 29th Connecticut Colored Regiment in the Civil War. Or that he had written an important account of his life. Or that his remains lie beneath a paved-over, segregated burial ground, now a parking lot not a block from where they live.
Now, thanks to the genealogical activism of independent scholar John Mills and his Alex Breanne Corporation, they do.
Continue reading ‘Genealogy As Activism Uncovers Black History’
by | May 21, 2024 1:21 pm | Comments (0)
Maya McFadden photo
Imani Bryan and Alexis Aguirre unpacking first AP African American Studies class.
After learning about everything from Africa’s Mali Empire to Black rebellion during Reconstruction to the history of slave codes and slave ships and convict leasing — and with coursework still to come on the Black Panther Party and the Black Arts Movement — Career High School senior Eliana Brito Castillo praised her school’s inaugural Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies class as opening her eyes to “a huge part of history that isn’t taught.”
“Now,” she said, “I feel I have a more complete view of how America came to be.”
Continue reading ‘African American Studies Class Finishes First Year’
by | May 21, 2024 9:19 am | Comments (3)
Abiba Biao Photos
Fred Harris, with the mayor: "The fight is not over."
Six decades after leading a grassroots movement for racial, educational, and housing justice in the Hill while battling New Haven’s political leaders, Fred Harris returned to City Hall — to be recognized as a hometown hero.
by | May 20, 2024 9:21 am | Comments (3)
Keynote speaker Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III.
“I grew up in hell a block away from heaven.”
Those are the words of the rapper 50 Cent. And that “lyrical poetic audacity,” in the words of Dr. Frederick Haynes III, senior pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, summed up the message of the 107th Annual Freedom Fund Dinner of the Greater New Haven Branch of the NAACP.
“There is no such thing as thriving for some and surviving for others,” Haynes, the keynote speaker, told a spirited audience of 325 at the Omni Hotel. “If we don’t thrive together, we’re going to be torn apart.”
by | May 13, 2024 8:43 am | Comments (3)
Allan Appel photo
Bessie "B.B." Duncan (second from left), with granddaughter Towanna (right) and great-grandsons Jerrell and Jeremy.
Bessie Duncan has plenty of wisdom to share upon reaching the age of 105.
One piece of advice: Drink one full cup of black coffee every morning, no cream, no sugar.
Another: Obey the law, because if you act up, you’ll suffer the consequences.
A third, at least in regards to this reporter: If this article about her centenary-plus-five birthday celebration is not accurate and true, she’s “gonna get” me.
by | May 7, 2024 12:26 pm | Comments (3)
Lisa Reisman photo
Well-wishers gathered Sunday for Sister Geneva.
The late Geneva Pollock.
Geneva Pollock showed up.
She showed up for the three generations of students she taught English to at Jackie Robinson Middle School; for the neighbors she met on her Newhallville door-knocking tours; for anyone she heard had lost a loved one and was grieving.
On a brisk, grey morning, 125 people showed up to honor the legacy of Pollock, who died in May 2020 at 76 years old, with a street corner renaming.
The four-foot-nine dynamo who grew up picking cotton in Alabama went on to become “a teacher, a ward co-chair, an usher, a mother and grandmother, a friend, my friend, and so much more,” said Claudine Wilkins-Chambers, as she waited for the street renaming ceremony to begin. “She did so much for so many of us.”
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.
Continue reading ‘New Haven, Yale, and Slavery: The Real Story’
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.
Continue reading ‘Cigars, Cupcakes & Lemonade: Black Entrepreneurship On Display’
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.
Continue reading ‘Living Black History Today: 2 Leaders Look Back, To The Present’
by | Feb 26, 2024 11:46 am | Comments (0)
Watch Friday’s fashion show above.
Long polka dot skirts from the ’50s, black leather jackets from the ’60s, and bell bottoms from the ’70s all made a return to Hill Regional Career High School as it celebrated Black fashion throughout the years.
Continue reading ‘Career High Black History Assembly Cruises Decades Of Culture’
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.
by | Feb 12, 2024 9:13 am | Comments (3)
Lisa Reisman Photo
David Daniels at author talk at Stetson Library.
The Sunday, Aug. 21, 1994, edition of the Connecticut Post pictures a young Black man in police blues holding a hangman’s noose. The man was David Daniels, a police officer. The noose was left on his patrol car.
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.
Continue reading ‘“A Dixwell Daughter": Q House Unveils Constance Baker Motley Forever Stamp’
by | Jan 25, 2024 3:14 pm | Comments (4)
Yale News / Dan Renzetti
Ruby Bridges in Woolsey Hall.
Laura Glesby Photo
Lauren Anderson and Janeska.
As Ruby Bridges spoke about making civil rights history simply by going to school, 15-year-old Janeska reflected on her own experience at a new high school this year.
Continue reading ‘Ruby Bridges Resonates With Edgewood Teen’