35 Years Later, Ethnic History Steps Into Future

As culture wars continued raging elsewhere across the country, an island of cross-ethnic cooperation and understanding celebrated a milestone in New Haven.

That celebration took place Sunday on Fitch Street inside the Ethnic Heritage Center on the campus of Southern Connecticut State University.

Members of five ethnic historical societies gathered there to celebrate their organization’s 35th anniversary.

The five groups — the Jewish Historical Society, the Italian-American Historical society, the Ukrainian-American Historical Society, the Irish-American Historical Society, and the African-American Historical Society (known in a previous incarnation as the Afro-American Historical Society) — came together while working on a joint exhibit for New Haven 350th anniversary bash on the Green in 1988.

They found they enjoyed sharing each other’s stories. So they formed a formal organization. In 2001 they brought their archives and exhibits and records to create a home in the joint space offered by SCSU.

“We have learned so much about each other. And we love each other,” EHC Ukrainian-American Society President Gloria Horbaty (pictured) told the three dozen people gathered inside the one-story facility for Sunday’s event.

Italian-American Society President Laura Parisi (pictured) spoke about discovering how each group’s tradition had its own version of ​“the evil eye.”

Each group had historical artifiacts on display, like these Ukrainian dolls …

… pages of the original New Haven Independent, an early 20th century Italian-language newspaper published on Wooster Street …

… including minutes starting from 1910 from the ​“20th Century Club,” a group of Black women helping newcomers from the South adjust to living here and navigate health care, while also staging theatrical and musical events. (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has the minutes books from the group’s first decade.)

“Each of the ethnic groups represented here today had a role in building New Haven,” said African-American Society President Carolyn Baker, pictured reviewing the minutes. The center unveiled at the event a new ongoing exhibit about their members’ group’s decade-by-decade histories in New Haven. Click here to read more about that and information about the center.

SCSU Vice-President Diane Ariza called organizations like the EHC ​“vital to civic society. … A sense of unity cannot be taken for granted anymore. … If a group is not recognized, it cannot be protected from injustice.” Ariza is pictured above at left with Rhoda Zahler Samuel, coordinator for one of the EHC’s newer projects: Creation of ethnic neighborhood walking tours, featuring books with self-guided routes and histories. Click here, here, here, and here, to read previous stories about those tours. Pointing to the room overflowing with visitors and artifacts, Samuel noted the center is looking for larger quarters. Ariza said SCSU is on the case.