Curriculum design and memorial with Witness Stones
The Witness Stones Project began in 2017 in Guilford, Connecticut with the placement of three small plaques commemorating the lives of Moses, Candace, and Phillis. The project was inspired by the Stolpersteine project, which works to place small stones inscribed with the names and life details of Jews who were kidnapped and murdered during the Holocaust in front of the homes in which they used to live. Witness Stones has been working to memorialize enslaved individuals in several cities across Connecticut in a similar way.
“It’s not only the story of dehumanization—that dehumanization is what causes Black Lives Matter to happen today—but it is the story of people showing their humanity, showing their agency within the confines of the institution of slavery.” says Dennis Culliton, one of the founders of Witness Stones.
Culliton describes the project as “hyperlocal”. “We’re not teaching Connecticut about Connecticut history—we’re teaching New Haven about New Haven history, Morris Cove about Morris Cove history.”
To bring Witness Stones to new cities, Culliton partners with historic organizations such as the New Haven Museum or Stoutsburg-Sourland African American Museum to conduct research on enslaved persons that had lived in the area. Culliton then works with interested schools to conduct a three-day teacher workshop introducing them to the framework, intent, and lesson plan of the Witness Stones curriculum.
“That's usually the first part, is teaching teachers what they learned was wrong, or wasn’t the whole truth,” says Culliton. After revisiting and clarifying the history of northern slavery, the workshop then explains the various lessons and research activities that will later culminate in the placing of a witness stone.
“My heart is—let’s work this project so that not only white kids get to learn and experience the history that maybe their ancestors were involved in, but let's have a curriculum that the students of color see themselves as central in the stories that we’re trying to tell,” said Culliton.
The curriculum focuses on five themes: dehumanization, treatment of the enslaved, paternalism, economics, and agency and resistance. Students are then separated into groups to participate in a jigsaw activity. Each group is tasked with completing research on one set of primary source documents gathered, scanned, and distributed by Witness Stones, and then teaching what they learned to the class. These documents range from anecdotes, to wills, to probate records. Information is then compiled over the course of several lessons to create a biographical sketch of an enslaved person from the area.
The ceremony surrounding the placement of the Witness Stone differs from city to city, but often engages local clergy, community members, and the student body for speeches and other memorial activities.
“Restore the history and honor the humanity,” is their philosophy, according to Culliton.
Now in its 4th year, the Witness Stones hopes to continue its project and unsettle harmful myths regarding slavery in New England.
“So much of what we have to do is not give ourselves a break here in the North about our history,” said Culliton. In particular, he points out the touting of northern slavery as a “good, or a lenient slavery”.
“The other flip part of it is—slaves weren’t passive. They were agents in their own lives. We can find it if we look, it’s just the people who were recording weren’t telling us that. You might have to find it in a property record, you might have to find it in a runaway ad.”
Above all, Culliton emphasizes the direct link between enslaved histories and the social justice movements of today.
“Why do we need to know this? We need to know this because this informs us why people were marching on the street in New Haven this summer.” He goes on to say, “Finding an enslaved person listed among the livestock in a probate inventory: that was a punch to the gut the first time and for many of the kids it’ll be a punch to the gut. But that’s okay.”
“I’m hoping our kids are getting a running headstart to learn the things that we’re only learning now. Imagine the changes you could make if you already know that our Connecticut economy was a slave economy. If you knew that starting out—if the people leading our state knew then what we know now, maybe these zoning laws would already be gone. We’re hoping that we’re empowering these kids and building a foundation of understanding to allow them to take all of this to the next step.”
Written by the ARTLC Team.