by | Nov 8, 2022 2:25 pm | Comments (0)
Maya McFadden photos
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.
by | Oct 31, 2022 3:46 pm | Comments (10)
Thomas Breen photos
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.
by | Oct 31, 2022 9:52 am | Comments (0)
Melissa Bailey file photo
The late Winfred Rembert at his Newhall St. home.
Allan Appel photo
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.
Continue reading ‘Rembert's Rep Rises At NXTHVN Celebration’
by | Oct 27, 2022 11:30 am | Comments (10)
Thomas Breen photo
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.”
by | Oct 24, 2022 12:47 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel photo
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.
Continue reading ‘"Lawyer Crawford" Remembered As Black Legal Icon’
by | Sep 21, 2022 4:30 pm | Comments (20)
David Yaffe-Bellany Photo
George Edwards at a 2016 hip-hop conference.
The state tried to frame George Edwards and lock him up for life. His fellow revolutionaries tortured him and tried to kill him.
They didn’t know whom they were messing with.
by | Aug 1, 2022 9:36 am | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden Photo
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.
by | Jul 6, 2022 11:46 am | Comments (4)
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.”
by | Jul 5, 2022 2:08 pm | Comments (2)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Ramsey, center, at Grove Street Cemetery.
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.
Continue reading ‘Patriot's Past Inspires Fresh Look At History’
by | Jun 29, 2022 4:42 pm | Comments (0)
Jordan Ashby Photo
Percussionist Michael Mills and friends welcome home the Amistad with a beat.
New Haven welcomed the historic Amistad schooner home Wednesday — with a modern-day civil rights case on its mind.
Continue reading ‘With Cox Case In Mind, Amistad Welcomed Home To Long Wharf Pier’
by | Jun 19, 2022 8:05 pm | Comments (6)
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.
by | Jun 17, 2022 6:18 pm | Comments (3)
Thomas Breen photos
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.”
Continue reading ‘Rich History Revealed In Canal Walking Tour’
by | Jun 10, 2022 4:39 pm | Comments (16)
Symbol of a new NHFD era: Firefighters Shy Floyd and Shemica Foreman.
Maya McFadden Photo
Firefighters sport Juneteenth T-shirts.
Saving lives and celebrating Juneteenth are on the agenda this month for the New Haven Fire Department (NHFD).
by | May 18, 2022 9:27 am | Comments (7)
Maya McFadden Photos
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.
by | Apr 29, 2022 10:10 am | Comments (10)
Ronald Thomas Rendition
Artist's rendering of Lucretia.
We don’t know where in Africa Lucretia was born. We don’t know where she’s buried. We do know where she lived in New Haven — and Ann Garrett Robinson and Steven Winter are working, four centuries later, to make sure her name lives on there.
Continue reading ‘Petition Drive Supports "Lucretia's Corner"’
by | Apr 11, 2022 9:53 am | Comments (3)
Addys Castillo beamed as she looked at the crowd assembled Saturday evening for the inaugural show of bomba group Proyecto Cimarrón. To her, it was fitting that the show be held where it was, at the Citywide Youth Coalition on Chapel Street, which Castillo referred to as the Black and Brown Power Center. “This space is a space for liberation,” she said. “A place for people to laugh, have joy, and plan revolution.”
by | Apr 4, 2022 9:15 am | Comments (5)
Maya McFadden Photos
Monty Alexander performs alongside T.K Blue.
Arriving at the show with my folks.
My dad leaned over from the left and pointed to the stage, where Jamaican Jazz pianist Monty Alexander was holding down his piano keys on particular notes and chords to emphasize them.
“Jazz is made up of accents,” my dad informed me.
To my right side my I heard my stepmother hum the words to a Bob Marley tune.
by | Mar 28, 2022 11:53 am | Comments (1)
Kimberly Wipfler Photo
Nisaa Monk Williams performs at Stetson.
Old-school jazz brought audience members of all ages to their feet dancing at the new Stetson Library Branch, during “A Celebration of Jazz,” put on in collaboration by the Shubert Theatre, Monk Youth Jazz, the Frederick A. DeLuca Foundation, and the New Haven Free Public Library.
The event, held Saturday, showcased performances by the band Chill, featuring members of Thelonius Monk’s family and Monk Youth Jazz students.
Continue reading ‘Thelonious Monk's Legacy Jazzes Up Stetson’
by | Mar 21, 2022 5:22 pm | Comments (9)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Diane Brown at entrance to new Stetson Branch Library.
Diane Brown swung open the door Monday morning to a long-awaited new, enhanced neighborhood library and community anchor at the corner of Dixwell Avenue and Foote Street, with lots more room, more books, and more to do.
by | Mar 7, 2022 9:27 am | Comments (0)
Young event attendees sing — and show off their outfits for the evening, which they described as "pajamas," dashikis and "normal church clothes."
Voices and spirits were lifted Saturday night during Hamden’s Mount Zion Seventh-Day Adventist Church’s annual Black history celebration.
by | Mar 3, 2022 4:47 pm | Comments (0)
Kimberly Wipfler Photo
Retired Judge Angela Robinson Thursday at Mauro-Sheridan.
Retired state judge Angela Robinson visited students at Mauro-Sheridan Thursday for the 24th consecutive year — partly in honor of a late educator who first brought her to the school, partly in honor of another woman poised to make history on the bench.
Continue reading ‘Judge Robinson Invokes Judge Jackson On 24th Mauro-Sheridan Rendezvous’
by | Feb 23, 2022 1:52 pm | Comments (8)
ConnCORP image
Rendering of redeveloped Dixwell Plaza, with outdoor public space.
Imagine jazz festivals at a new 350-seat theater on Dixwell Avenue. And a mural celebrating the neighborhood’s rich history of Black art. And a landscaped public plaza replete with sculptures and furniture and dance, poetry, and hip hop.
A local redevelopment team heard those hopes, dreams, and visions during a community meeting focused on the cultural potential of a transformed Dixwell Plaza.
Continue reading ‘Plaza Redevelopers Dream Big For Dixwell Art’
by | Feb 22, 2022 6:31 pm | Comments (2)
Maya McFadden Photo
Local leaders at Tuesday's celebration.
The late New Haven born civil rights leader and federal judge Constance Baker Motley will get her due, if U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro succeeds in a mission in Washington.
Continue reading ‘Congressional Medal In Sight For Constance Baker Motley’
by | Feb 21, 2022 9:52 am | Comments (9)
Brian Slattery Photo
The crowd Sunday at Bloom Black History event.
Book lovers descended Sunday on Bloom to sample not only the assortment of flowers and soaps, but the works of James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, and Jesmyn Ward — brought into the Edgewood Avenue lifestyle store and gathering place courtesy of Bamn Books, a New Haven-based mobile bookstore that focuses on the literature of the African diaspora.
by | Feb 14, 2022 10:10 am | Comments (16)
(Update Monday 1:39 PM: After this article appeared, Facebook changed its mind and allowed Promise to boost the Black History Month posts.)
Facebook didn’t want you to look at the above post. Facebook considers it too “sensitive.”