Wednesday, November 10
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
The mission of the Witness Stones Project is to restore the history and honor the humanity and contributions of enslaved individuals who helped build our communities through research, education, and civic engagement. The project started in 2017 when Doug Nygren, after hearing Dennis Culliton speak about the enslaved in Guilford, CT, shared with him the memorialization of Jews in Berlin and Central Europe through the Stolpersteine Project. There, the “Stumbling Stones” are installed in front of places where the Jews lived freely before they were kidnapped and murdered during the Holocaust. With that inspiration, Dennis created the Witness Stones Project he now leads as the Executive Director.
In less than four years, 15 schools, and over 4,000 students have engaged in the Witness Stones curriculum, learning about the history of slavery in the North. They use the Five Themes of Slavery as a lens to analyze and extract biographical information about the African and African Americans who were so much a part of colonial Connecticut. From Hester Meade in Greenwich, to Tamar Loomis in Suffield, to James Mars in Norfolk, to Pink in New Haven, and to Moses in Guilford, our students are adding back the colors to the fabric of our history.
