Dixwell’s ​“Forgotten Pioneers” Remembered

The room was filled with mingling and reminiscing as community members gathered to hear Dixwell neighborhood stories from 1860 to 1970, and to celebrate the giants who were instrumental to shaping their lives.

Around 50 people gathered at ConnCAT’s headquarters at 4 Science Park on a recent Saturday evening to listen to seven New Haveners recount those stories of the Dixwell neighborhood at an event called Forgotten Pioneers: Ancestral Family Stories of Dixwell.

But first, there was a reception. Guests mingled and reminisced as they broke bread while perusing works of art made by youth, depicting long-gone businesses and clubs where iconic musicians performed for the then-majority-Black community.

Denise Keyes Page opened the storytelling event by sharing its goals as well as introducing storytellers for the evening. Page served as the project coordinator and producer for the event and New Haven Artists Corps. Page’s business, Ubuntu Storytellers, suited her for the project. Ubuntu aims to teach everyday people to craft and tell their family and community stories, and Page brought that mission to this project. She helped Gary Tinney, Ramona Bryant, IfeMichelle Gardin, Jesse Hameen II, Willie Holmes, William Kilpatrick, and John Alston refine their stories of Dixwell from 1860 to 1970. 

Page said she was inspired to do the project because of a lifetime of ​“appreciating New Haven and Dixwell, and having a family that was very immersed in New Haven, in giving to New Haven,” she said. ​“I had this vision that I wanted to do this, but I didn’t know how or where and then I saw the grant came out from Arts Council. I thought, ​‘take a shot at it,’ and they were enthusiastic.”

Music and photos from the time framed the conversation as Babz Rawls Ivy, emcee and chair of the New Haven Arts Council’s board, entreated the storytellers to share. Page began with a story of her family’s presence in the neighborhood during the late 1800s, as businesspeople and landowners who supported their neighbors. ​“We must remember that we’ve been here making a difference for generations,” she said.

Each of the storytellers shared memories that resonated with the audience, who laughed, gasped, and shed a few tears, as the conversation rolled from the 1860s to the 1970s. Ramona Bryant talked about going to schools in Dixwell and having Black teachers who looked out for her and her peers, teachers who lived in the community, who knew their parents, who doled out discipline that built their character. She talked about wanting to ensure that young people today know who people like Helene Grant were. They are more than just names on a building: they are people who made significant contributions to the community.

Page invited other panelists to weigh in and share their recollections of community champions and spaces where folks gathered, and the panelists did just that. They remembered luminaries like Charlie Tyman; the diminutive, feisty, and stalwart Edna Carnegie; and her sister Constance Baker Motley, who before she became a legal giant ensured that kids in Dixwell knew and understood their history, the history of Black people. 

One compelling story shared by Hameen demonstrated how far these allies would go to ensure the success of Black youth from Dixwell. He talked about how Mrs. Carnegie helped his sister get into boarding school, which helped her go on to become a lawyer.

Mr. Willie Holmes, the elder on the panel, described being a young person in Virginia and acting as a caddy for rich white men on golf courses, where he was allowed on the course to teach the intricacies of the game but where he himself couldn’t play. One of those titans of industry entreated him to go north and get an education, which is how he found himself in New Haven. 

Once in New Haven he enrolled at Quinnipiac University, where he used his knowledge of golf to start the campus’s first golf club. He met Shepherd Brock during that time, and Brock took him under his wing as a mentor and encouraged the young golfer to be a leader in the Knickerbockers Golf Club, a club that focused on providing golf education and scholarships for Black youth. Holmes is still involved with the club.

Page played the classic R&B hit ​“Don’t Mess With Bill” as Kilpatrick conjured memories of Mr. Bill, who once ran the Dixwell Q House and knew every kid and family in the neighborhood. He was a friend and ally, a champion who instilled pride of person and place in the young people who frequented the Q House. The audience sang along and shouted out Mr. Bill as their collective memory of the leader kicked in. Kilpatrick’s brother, Hameen, pulled out a laminated copy of his Q House membership card from 1945 and the crowd oohed and aahed.

Hameen, a world-renowned drummer, went on to talk about his time at the Q House and Winchester School, where he started his first band, Cuban Nights. ​“We did odd jobs to make money to buy instruments and uniforms,” he said. They didn’t have instruments, so they started by singing and doing Hambone, which he demonstrated, and using old phone books as drums. 

Paul Huggins, a musician and drummer, connected with the group and taught them Afro-Cuban rhythms that Hameen still uses today. Huggins went on to drum for Bowen Peters, the neighborhood’s Black dancing school where African dance was taught along with ballet, jazz and tap. He and Bill Fitch became professional musicians. Before the end of the evening, Hameen said that when he travels the world playing shows with bands like Santana and they introduce him as a son of New York, he is quick to correct them: ​“New Haven made me.” 

The conversation turned to businesses in the neighborhood. Back then, the Dixwell corridor was thriving, and some folks ran businesses from their homes — like Mrs. Handy. Denise Keyes Page shared the story of Saturday afternoons at Mrs. Handy’s, who did hair out of her kitchen, and remembered the smells and sounds as she got her hair pressed sitting in a chair by the stove. People came and went chatting with Mrs. Handy, who, Page realized later, was running numbers, too.

Rawls Ivy guided the conversation to the brick-and-mortar businesses like the jazz clubs and bars strung along the Dixwell corridor. Everyone remembered The Monterey, where all the greats played. IfeMichelle Gardin talked about her uncle, Eugene Huckaby, who owned Unique Boutique — where you went to buy everything from Jet magazine to Fashion Fair makeup. The store was a hub, always filled with folks buying the things they couldn’t find in Malley’s or other stores downtown, like pressing combs and wigs. 

Gardin also talked about her grandmother and Huckaby’s mother Mrs. Huckaby, a social service coordinator at Ivy Street school who made sure every student had what they needed to be successful. Her clothing closet and food bank helped hundreds of students, and her son replicated that commitment to community service in Unique Boutique, where he quietly gave from the store to folks in need, Gardin said. Panelists also cited the Black doctors and dentists whose offices lined Dixwell Avenue.

Tinney chimed in and talked about his time at Helene Grant School and how his mom, as punishment, marched him to the barber shop to shave off his beloved afro after cutting up in school. He remembered how the barber shop was a place of learning, community, and healing. A place where men talked about the issues of the day and how these issues related to the neighborhood and their lives.

Alston nodded his head and added that as a young person growing up, he did not see himself or his peers as poor because they had everything they needed. ​“The village held us and made sure we made it through,” he said. The prevailing sentiment of the night was that the neighborhood then was a living, breathing thing that held folks together, lifted them up, and allowed them to learn and grow both individually and collectively.

Kevin Ewing — known as Rev Kev — said he came to the event because ​“Dixwell is a historic neighborhood and it’s very significant to the Black people of this area, of New England in general, but Connecticut in particular.”

He continued: ​“I think the stories of our seniors in particular shouldn’t get lost. We need to hear those stories, we need to hear the stories of the overcoming of the successes, and of the vibrancy that this neighborhood once had so we can start thinking of ways to get that back.”

Douglas Wardlaw said he felt this event was important because ​“our neighborhoods, Dixwell and Newhallville and New Haven in general, are taking on a whole new look, and we need some folks to really realize and tell the history, our history, before it gets lost. This is a great way to do that.” 

“I think we have a responsibility, one, not only to let to let young people and others know what we have had here, we also have a responsibility to honor it by reviving it,” Page said of why she found the event necessary. Page wants to do another round of the storytelling project in February and is looking for funding to support that effort.