Welcome to your free bi-weekly newsletter from Connecticut Explored with the latest stories, the newest Grating the Nutmeg podcast, programs and exhibitions from our partners to see/watch this month, and more! In this issue, we bring you a story about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s summers in Connecticut, a podcast about the iconic Toad’s Place in New Haven, and our Kids Page!
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Game Changer: Summers of Freedom: Martin Luther King Jr. in Connecticut
In the summer of 2010, sixteen Simsbury High School students began an inquiry-based research project on the early life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Before he became a famous civil rights leader. As a teenager, he worked in the tobacco fields in Simsbury. The shade tobacco industry industry was thriving in 1944 and young people came from afar to harvest and process it. The students wondered how the fifteen-year-old King’s experience in our state affected the young man.
Most of the archival research took place at the Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum in Windsor and the Simsbury Free Library. Students conducted oral-history interviews in Simsbury and at Shiloh Baptist Church in Hartford. The students compiled and presented their research in a short documentary film entitled Summers of Freedom.
As Richard Curtiss notes in his article in our Winter issue, “In his address, ‘The Future of Integration,’ King specifically mentions working in Simsbury as a young man. It’s the only known audio recording where he mentions his time working in the state. Another important discovery was the connection between King’s time in Connecticut and his later decision to join the ministry. On his 1948 application to Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, King states that his call to join the ministry occurred during the summer of 1944 when he ‘felt an inescapable urge to serve society.’” The man who would revolutionize our society with his efforts to create a more equal and just world found his time in Connecticut to be life-altering.
Read more in our Winter issue. Not subscriber? Join now!
Editor’s Picks
“What Would Dr. King Want You To Do?” Connecticut Explored, Fall 2011
“Southern Blacks Transform Connecticut,” Connecticut Explored, Fall 2013
Dawn Byron Hutchins, “Laboring in the Shade,“ for Connecticut Explored, https://connecticuthistory.org/laboring-in-the-shade/
Steve Thornton, “The Language of the Unheard: Racial Unrest in 20th-Century Hartford,” https://connecticuthistory.org/the-language-of-the-unheard-racial-unrest-in-20th-century-hartford/
Connecticut History for Kids’ Page
Each year, more than 4,000 Connecticut students take part in History Day. Working independently or in groups, History Day students choose a topic and develop a project on an annual theme. State Coordinator Rebecca Taber describes the History Day philosophy as “student choice, student voice.”
We hear a lot today about the inability of people to discuss controversial topics, but History Day students learn to view multiple perspectives. According to Sia Reddy of Talcott Mountain Academy, understanding the past involves “listening to both sides of a story with an open mind, diving deep into evidence, and considering the historical context of the time period to understand and formulate your own opinion of what happened.”
Subscribers can read the entire article in our magazine, but you can also read more about this year’s History Day on our website. And read more on our blog about Connecticut History Day’s student citizen historians at https://www.ctexplored.org/student-citizen-historians/.
You Be the Judge! Connecticut History Day needs Judges!
Connecticut History Day seeks people who love history to judge at one (or more!) of the in-person 2023 contests. You can access the judges portal HERE. Scroll to the correct contest and go ahead and register. If you would like to judge at multiple contests, please create an account with one of the Regional Contests and use the Multi-Judge Contest Portal. If you need assistance, please email: info@historydayct.org.
156. The Legendary Toad’s Place Nightclub in New Haven
Wall-to-wall posters, sticky floors, a small stage and the stale-beer smell give Toad’s Place its enduring character as a live-music shrine. Authenticity can’t be faked. Opened as a restaurant in 1975, Toad’s has welcomed hundreds of musical acts from the pioneers of the Blues like B.B. King, to today’s megastars Drake and Cardi B.—And of course, The Boss! But what does it take to run a nightclub? And have it be successful for almost half a century?
Bruce Springsteen, The Boss, at Toad’s Place.
Author and historian Mary Donohue interviews Randall Beach, co-author with Toad’s Place owner Brian Phelps, of the new book The Legendary Toad’s Place, Stories from New Haven’s Famed Music Venue, published in 2021 by Globe Pequot Press. Beach was the rock music critic for the New Haven Register from 1978 to 1984, covering many shows at Toad’s Place. He later wrote about rock music for the New Haven Advocate, the Hartford Courant, and Billboard magazine. He currently writes a column for Connecticut magazine.
Read more about Toad’s Place in the photo essay published in Connecticut Explored at https://www.ctexplored.org/what-these-walls-have-heard-a-photo-essay-on-new-havens-legendary-toads-place/
Support CT History podcast Grating the Nutmeg
We’re putting all the Grating the Nutmeg episodes into the Connecticut Digital Archive to preserve them for posterity. Help us with a donation if you can. We appreciate any amount towards this great project.
Programs and Exhibitions to Enjoy This Month and Ring in the New Year!
[Thomas Ingle (1920–1978), So, ca. 1950. Oil on canvas, 30 x 20 in. Florence Griswold Museum, Gift of James McNair from the estate of Sewell Sillman]
Through works by such artists as James Daugherty, Edmund Greacen, Mary Knollenberg, Willard Metcalf, Winfred Rembert, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, and Connecticut’s own Charles Ethan Porter, the exhibition Dreams & Memories explores the titular concepts as drivers of artistic creativity and expressions of powerful forces in American society. The exhibition is on view through May 14, 2023. Find a full slate of exhibition-related programming at FlorenceGriswoldMuseum.org, including a painting demonstration, gallery talks, virtual tours, and mindfulness events.
Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme Street, Old Lyme. 860-434-5542; florencegriswoldmuseum.org
Telling New Stories from Early Hartford: Black, White and Indigenous
The Ancient Burying Ground Association in Hartford announces its latest projects, two digital exhibitions that tell fresh stories of the individuals buried there. Both projects include scholarship that cuts across race, gender, and class to tell stories of Black, White, and Indigenous members of Hartford’s Colonial-era society. The exhibitions will portray “Women: Black, White and Indigenous lives in the ABG” and “Ties to the Caribbean: Black, White, and Indigenous Lives in the ABG.” The project is sponsored in part with a grant from CT Humanities. Public Programs will be presented throughout 2023, beginning in the early spring. For more information and to view the exhibitions, please visit the website listed below. The Ancient Burying Ground is a public historic site that is open to the public daily, located at the corners of Main and Gold Streets in downtown Hartford.
The Ancient Burying Ground, 60 Gold St, Hartford, CT 06103; 860-337-1640;
theancientburyingground.org
Some important but sad news about two of our organizational partners
Hartford Public Library damage. Creator: Joe Amon | Credit: Connecticut Public
The Hartford Public Library’s Main Street branch was forced to close for several weeks after a water line on the fourth floor broke on Christmas Eve. All four floors of the library suffered water damage and a lengthy clean up process is currently underway. If you would like to help the public library, you can donate here.
On Dec. 23, 2022 someone hurled rocks at the Mark Twain House on Farmington Avenue in Hartford, breaking a window. Staff quickly repaired it, but on New Year’s Eve someone threw chunks of asphalt at the house, breaking another window and damaging a statue’s hand inside. The house that Forbes magazine called the “best house museum in the country” is a treasure. A GoFundMe page has been set up to help repair the damage. You can read more in Susan Dunne’s article in the Hartford Courant. Anyone with information about the vandalism incidents can contact Hartford Detective Sid Palmieri at 860-483-6882 or palmc002@hartford.gov, or Detective Anthony Buccher at 860-757-4175 or bucca001@hartford.gov.
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