LETTER: Black Studies or American History? It’s Both, in Wilton Too

To the Editor:

Black studies have come under fire recently, politicized amid the fear of addressing over 400 years of America’s racial history. Especially now, during Black History Month, it’s even more critical to remember that history as foundational to our understanding of America today, and denying it does not negate it.

Those stories extend to the local level, specifically right here in Wilton. Recently, the town has benefitted from several opportunities to examine that history closely.
Julie Hughes, Ph.D., archivist of the Wilton Library’s Russell History Room (containing collections of both the library and the Wilton Historical Society) and the Brubeck Collection, described some of her work on the subject in her presentation two weeks ago at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church. She has painstakingly and brilliantly researched these historical accounts in original source materials across the period that slavery continued here and beyond. (Slavery in Connecticut ended in full only in 1848.)

Dr. Hughes’ talk was a prelude to an upcoming program called the Witness Stones Project. All Wilton residents, youth and adults, are welcome to the opening session (March 1 from 6-8 p.m. at the WEPCO Church Complex) to learn about the history of slavery in Connecticut and the details of the project. Two more sessions on March 8 and March 15 will have 6th-9th graders engaging with project leaders to research historical documents and create a narrative through story, music, drama, poetry and video about one person who was enslaved here in Wilton. In May, a Witness Stone will be permanently installed in this person’s honor in a community observance as a fitting, if long overdue, tribute. 

Wilton residents were fortunate to attend a different presentation that focused a broader, national lens on the same subject in a talk by Dr. Janus Adams to kick off the 16th year of the Wilton Library and Wilton Historical Society’s joint series on American history. She spoke on “bending the arc of history,” beginning with the end of the Civil War and the start of the Jim Crow era — which gave rise to both de jure as well as de facto segregation that terrorized so many Black Americans for generations — and continuing right up to the modern Civil Rights era.

One week later, Dr. Adams was followed by Prof. Camesha Scruggs who presented on the significant role of Black domestic workers and children in the Civil Rights Movement.

Honest review of American history requires acknowledging how generations of government-imposed segregation extended well beyond the impact even of Jim Crow laws, affecting access to housing (explicitly segregated and redlined by our state and federal governments), employment, and high-quality education across our country right up through today.

Is all of this Black studies, or is it American history? In fact, it is both. Denial only makes it harder to deal effectively with the consequences of prolonged racial injustice and avoid repeating past mistakes. All of us as Americans have much not only to assimilate and understand but also to celebrate in Black history even as we deplore the suffering so much of it has entailed.

The cotton trade, built literally on the backs of enslaved people, was a key determinant of U.S. financial prosperity before the war and was a critical factor in geopolitics at the time. It bears remembering that enormous collective — albeit involuntary — impact while focusing on so many tremendously accomplished Black Americans in periods of our post-slavery history when their accomplishments across our country, even under some of the worst of circumstances, could be, at last, more easily individually noted and recorded.

Consider just a very few of the many examples:

• Black churches became centerpieces of community economic development in post-slavery times, sponsoring — and in many cases owning as collective enterprises — everything from meat-processing, dairy, and, yes, cotton-farming operations to groceries, hardware stores and beauty salons.
• Despite Jim Crow laws, the wealthiest self-made woman — Black or white — of the late 19th- into the early 20th centuries, was a Black American beauty-products entrepreneur extraordinaire, Madam C.J. Walker. Women participating in her enterprise often earned incomes equivalent to white men of that period.
• Early in the 20th century, civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph successfully organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters as a powerful and effective union at a time when our federal and state courts were heavily anti-union, and large employers used private armies of Pinkertons and even government troops to put down labor protests. His organizing work was largely unpaid; he could afford to do it thanks to his wife, Louise Campbell Randolph (an activist herself) who earned a livelihood in Madam Walker’s enterprise.
• Decades later, as the nation ramped up production for World War II, it was Randolph again who was among the leaders of the threatened million-man march on Washington. That threat helped persuade FDR to issue an executive order prohibiting all federal government contractors from employment discrimination.
• Immediately post-World War II, Randolph helped galvanize the effort that led President Truman to order an end to segregation in the U.S. Armed Forces. One generation later, Randolph was among Black leaders pressing for the adoption of what became the truly transformative Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

So many more American success stories can be found among the lives of Black Americans who persevered in the face of daunting challenges to find a way forward despite obstacles thrown in their paths. Their successes span literature, music, and the arts as well as business, law, medicine, and sports. Theirs are great American achievements that we should all want to study (and that Black Studies research is helping to illuminate and, in more than a few cases, actually bring to light) even as we profoundly regret the circumstances under which many of these achievements had to be accomplished.

It’s a rich history, and trying to hide it or deprecate its study does none of us any good even as it also disserves our highest ideals.

Stephen Hudspeth