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SUMMER 2025: Celebrations! Celebrating the legacy of Dr. Lorenzo Greene, a feminist vegetarian restaurant, and the Chagum family reunion. Plus: the Guilford Live Arts Festival and more summer events!
The Latest From Grating the Nutmeg
Ingredients for Revolution: Feminist Restaurants Featuring Bloodroot Restaurant
Connecticut Explored and our podcast, Grating the Nutmeg, have featured many of the heritage trails that mark the important histories and sites of Connecticut’s people. Preservation Connecticut has undertaken a survey of LGBTQ+ heritage sites across the state. Now, Grating the Nutmeg and Preservation Connecticut have teamed up to bring you a three-episode podcast series that pairs new research on LGBTQ+ identity and activism with accounts of the Connecticut places where history was made. The episodes include a thriving vegetarian cafe-bookstore run by lesbian feminists in a working-class former factory town, a transgender medical researcher working on an urgent public health issue in the center of Connecticut politics, and a gay, Jewish, best-selling children’s book author in affluent Fairfield County.
In our first episode, Dr. Alex Ketchum, author of Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses, published by Concordia University Press in 2022, reveals the history of women-owned restaurants in the 1970s and 1980s that had a feminist mission. In a first-ever overview of feminist cafe subculture, Ketchum’s book details the role eateries played in social justice movements, including women’s and LGBTQ+ liberation, and food justice. And we will highlight Bloodroot, the almost 50-year-old lesbian-feminist bookstore, collective, and vegetarian restaurant in Bridgeport.
Listen: Ingredients for Revolution: Feminist Restaurants featuring Bloodroot Restaurant
This episode of Grating the Nutmeg was supported by Preservation Connecticut, preserving the state’s heritage for 50 years and a Quick Grant from CT Humanities.
Out and About: GTN Executive Producer visits the legendary Bloodroot Restaurant and CT Explored Publisher attends the Chagum family reunion
In preparation for the latest episode, Executive Producer and Host of Grating the Nutmeg podcast, Mary Donohue, visited Bloodroot Vegetarian Restaurant & Bookstore in Bridgeport, CT. The eclectic menu boasts diverse vegetarian and vegan friendly dishes such as Cambodian kanji soup, vegan carrot lox, and Jamaican rum cake. Utilizing local ingredients, the menu regularly changes to reflect the seasons. Learn more about the history of women-owned restaurants with a feminist mission by streaming the episode above. We can’t wait to make our next reservation!
The Barkhamsted Lighthouse was a historical community located in what is now known as the Lighthouse Archaeological Site in Peoples State Forest in Barkhamsted, Connecticut.
On the 4th of July, the descendants of James Chagum (Chaughum), a Narragansett man, and Molly Barber, an English woman from Wethersfield, CT, held the Chagum family reunion at the PSF Pavilion and invited our Publisher, Kathy Hermes, and Wangunk elder Gary O’Neil (Red Oak), to speak. Kathy talked about Indigenous networks in 17th and 18th century Connecticut, and Gary talked about growing up Wangunk. The next day, Prof. Ken Feder (CCSU, emeritus), author of The Barkhamsted Lighthouse: The Archaeology of the Lighthouse Family, hosted a walking tour of the Site.
Scholar, Activist, Trailblazer: The Enduring Legacy of Dr. Lorenzo Greene
Maya Angelou wrote, “If you’re going to live, leave behind a legacy. Make an impact on the world that can never be erased.”
Dr. Lorenzo Johnston Greene’s life is a testament to living with intention. His expansive career spanned from 42 years as a history professor at Lincoln University to serving as president of the ASNLH. In his article, Scholar, Activist, Trailblazer: The Enduring Legacy of Dr. Lorenzo Greene, Close examines a diary from 1928 to 1930 Dr. Greene kept while working with Carter G. Woodson, a profile from 1942 written by his future wife, and an extensive oral history interview from 1975, all of which provide intimate details on Dr. Greene’s motivations.
Close writes, “Outside the classroom and archives, Greene established connections with organizations dedicated to fighting the ongoing discrimination and segregation throughout the state. He built working relationships with churches, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban Leagues of Kansas City and Saint Louis, the Missouri Association for Social Welfare, and progressive white students and faculty at the University of Missouri–Columbia. He aimed to integrate the town with the state’s largest public research university. A partnership with the Urban League, churches, civic groups, and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch resulted in significant social reforms.”
Learn more about Dr. Greene’s life and legacy in the Summer 2025 issue.
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Programs and Exhibitions to Enjoy This Month
Guilford Live Arts Festival
The 2025 GreenStage Guilford Live Arts Festival, August 10–17, presents approximately 30 live performances, hands-on workshops, and educational and interactive events that showcase regional and global history, culture, and values via the arts. The weeklong festival is centered on the historic Guilford green, and events take place at multiple other venues around town and elsewhere on the shoreline. The majority of events will be followed by community conversations with the artists, funded in part through a CT Humanities grant, to foster understanding of the histories, cultures, beliefs, traditions, literature, art forms, and motivations that informed the works. This year, GreenStage Guilford Live Arts Festival features shows every night, from August 10 to 15. Their biennial, always sold-out Dinner on the Green benefit, will be on August 14, and live shows will run continuously from Saturday morning, August 16, into the evening of Sunday, August 17. For more information, visit greenstageguilford.org.
CT Humanities, 100 Riverview Center, Suite 290, Middletown. ctbook@cthumanities.org, ctcenterforthebook.org
China from China: Porcelain and Stories of Early American Trade
With over a hundred examples of fine and decorative arts, this exhibition reveals how cultural and economic trade between China and the United States helped to shape a young nation and set the stage for a geopolitical relationship that endures today, with a focus on Connecticut merchants and sailors. A collaboration between the Lyman Allyn and the Dietrich American Foundation, China from China showcases the Dietrich collection of Chinese export porcelain and paintings, a portion of which was exhibited at the Chinese American Museum in Washington, DC, in 2022. Expanding on this material, the exhibition also features objects from the Lyman Allyn’s own collection and loans from regional public and private collections. It is on view June 14–September 14, 2025.
Lyman Allyn Art Museum, 625 Williams Street, New London. lymanallyn.org; 860-443-2545
Greenwich History in Full Bloom
Summer is prime time to enjoy Greenwich Historical Society’s beautiful campus! Take a tour of the National Historic Landmark Bush–Holley House, witness to the American Revolution and birth of a new nation. Stroll the Impressionist and heirloom gardens and visit the galleries to learn about the Cos Cob art colony and view the museum collections. Youngsters aged 12 and under can explore history through fun activities and crafts in the Time Travelers KidStudio. Gather friends and family to enjoy an evening picnic at the Music on the Great Lawn concert series—free to members. Visit the library and archives to access local history, landmarks, and genealogical resources. Complete your excursion with a stop at the museum store, featuring a unique selection of Greenwich-themed merchandise—perfect for summer travel gifting!
Greenwich Historical Society, 47 Strickland Road, Cos Cob. greenwichhistory.org; 203-869-6899
Editor’s Picks:
Mary Ellen Ellsworth, “Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Connecticut Feminist Prophet” Connecticut Explored, Winter 2011-2012.
Stacey Close, “Greater Hartford NAACP: 100 Years in the Freedom Struggle”Connecticut Explored, Fall 2017.
Erin Farley, “Site Lines: A Love Story at the Palmer-Warner House” Connecticut Explored, Fall 2019.