“People’s History” Hailed At NHFPL

When she was a teenager in New York City, Ellen Rubin got to know the family of Andrew Goodman, one of a trio of civil rights workers whose brutal murder by the Klu Klux Klan in Mississippi in 1964 fueled a growing national outrage that led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Those days and experiences sparked not only a social justice flame in her but also a career direction: ​“I became a nurse to learn first aid skills to help people in the revolution,” she recalled.

That memory emerged Thursday night where Rubin, now a little older and a long-time psychiatric nurse at Yale, and a dozen others braved the cold to come to the Ives Main Branch of the New Haven Public Library. There, Bridgeport activist, historian and journalist Andy Piascik launched the library’s winter author series with a lively reading from Radical Connecticut: People’s History in the Constitution State (Hard Ball Press, 2024).

Along with his co-author and union organizer Steve Thornton, Piascik has assembled an inspiring potpourri of portraits of everyday people — factory workers, Young Lords, Black Panthers, students daring to sit-in and challenge and educate their elders — and the strikes and movements these quietly heroic acts engendered.

The narratives relayed are in the spirit of ​“people’s history” in the tradition of Howard Zinn and Studs Terkel, everyday people’s stories — as opposed to the social justice stars like Malcolm X — that have often, to use the language of the library’s blurb, ​“been obscured, denigrated, or dismissed.”

So Piascik began his overview of the civil rights movement, which he said he preferred to term ​“the Black freedom movement,” with the four students — Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair Jr.), Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain Sr. and David Richmond — who one day just sat themselves down in at the whites-only section of the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., in February, 1960.

“That sit-in set in motion SNCC [the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee], and the Freedom Riders, all of which began within a year.”

And it spread all around the country, at Woolworth’s in Bridgeport, he said, where even though Black people were permitted to eat there, picketing put pressure on the company to change its policies nationwide. He reminded his listeners, like Rubin, and a handful of young activists, that at the time Woolworth’s was like MacDonald’s today. Ubiquitous.

“That was the key turning point.”

What makes Piascik’s book more than traditional ​“people’s history” is that it’s not limited to the lesser known heroes like those four African-American students from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College who had just grown sick of the segregation and decided to do something about it.

There are sections on radical women in Connecticut (and beyond) among whom he includes the famous, like Helen Keller (from Easton) for her achievements around the struggles of people with disabilities; and Katherine Hepburn (Old Saybrook) for the progressive views her fame was able to help spread.

And among the section on playwrights and writers there’s Hartford’s Mark Twain, hailed for his anti-imperialistic stances during America’s snatching of the Philippines.

And Arthur Miller, yes, that Arthur Miller of The Crucible and Death of a Salesman fame, who spent his later life in Roxbury, many of whose works, Piascik said, ​“investigate the fakery of the American Dream.” Piascik said Miller was attacked for his work by, among others, the House Unamerican Activities Committee, but ​“he dedicated his brilliance to shining a light on what matters to everyday people.”

What lessons might his survey yield for today? asked a reporter.

“Obviously we’re not in a good moment for popular struggle. Union membership is on decline and there’s a lull in the Black freedom movement. So one of the lessons is that without an organized foundation, a network, infrastructure, resources, the spontaneous moments can dissipate… People are now demoralized. If there’s going to be a revival, we’re going to have to pay attention to mutual support and morale.”

Piascik was preaching not only realism but sober optimism as well. One of the take-aways was that you never know when another spark, like the George Floyd murder, will happen and its powerful aftermath will ignite.

“If you were a progressive and lived in the late 1950s, not much was happening. Things didn’t look good at the dawn of the 1960s and life was bleak in the South. And then came the four students at North Carolina A&T. All kinds of ​‘little people’ doing little acts all over have changed the world.”

To a questioner, who asked after the reading whether Piascik deems suppression and surveillance more on the rise today than in the past, the author confessed that it’s hard to know. ​“I don’t want to be paranoid. A lot of this is hard stuff. But this is where history does play a role. There were always people who were in a worse situation — the Warsaw Ghetto, the Deep South, and they found a way. We can draw inspiration, and that’s one of the things we hope for the book.”

And that was good enough for Ellen Rubin. ​“I feel old and tired,” she said, with a smile, at the end of the reading, and after expression of thanks to Piascik for the presentation. ​“Fascism is circular,” she said. ​“It comes and goes and we still have to keep trying to right a system to make our society support well-being.”

And then before Piascik packed up and made his way to Union Station to catch the train back to Bridgeport, Rubin insisted on buying one of his books.

The next events in the library’s author series include Unsung Stories of Connecticut Pizza, with local historian Colin Caplan, Feb. 19; and The First and Last King of Haiti, by Marlene Daut, March 13. Both events are at the Ives Main Branch, in the downstairs community room, beginning at 6:00 p.m.

Piascik and Thornton are giving readings at libraries, union halls, and other venues around the state; they’re looking to do so at book stores and schools as well. The best contact is: andypiascik@yahoo.com