On Friday, June 4, 2022, the community gathered on the lawn of the Old Lyme Library to celebrate the second installation of Witness Stones on Lyme Street, extending this year to McCurdy Road. The program included music, poetry, and words from community partners and speakers,
Guest speakers Dain and Constance Perry. In an earlier Witness Stones event on Thursday evening at the library, the guest speakers presented the award-winning film "Traces of the Trade," in which they participated. The film documents the DeWolf family's extensive engagement in the slave trade in Bristol, Rhode Island. The DeWolfs' slave-owning began here in Old Lyme, and a Witness Stone placed at the upper Lyme Street green commemorates Mingo, the enslaved sawmill worker of Edward DeWolf.
World-renowned soprano Lisa Williamson and acclaimed saxophonist and U.S. Coast Guard Band conductor Richard Wyman provided music, along with twelve members of the Old Lyme Middle School chorus, led by Laura Ventres.
Frederick-Douglass Knowles, Hartford poet Laureate, presented his poem Shoots of Plants Blooming in Spring, written in response to an enslaved person remembered by the Witness Stones Project in New Haven, CT. You may read his poem below.
Seventh-grade students from the Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School read biographical poems they wrote to tell the life stories of Harry Freeman and Margaret Crosley Lewia. Using primary documents, the students researched these two enslaved town residents, making the story of local slavery tangible, personal, and relevant to their own lives. You may read a poem by one of the students below.
Shoots of Plants Blooming in Spring
For Pink Primus, circa 1791
Frederick-Douglass Knowles II
1.
Her slave master’s
favorite color was
most certainly green;
the shade of profit
from selling people
like stolen property.
A secondary color
misused to attune
the voice in her skin
to a second class
rainbow bent on
mashing molasses.
2.
I wonder what her
favorite color was?
Was it the color of
a freedom-blue sky?
Or the shimmer of
a lake under the sun?
Was it the color
of a flaring soul?
The embers of
ancestry fanning
the flame of her
descendant's dreams?
Was it the color of a
desert African Bush?
A lioness-beige
camouflaged by
the sandy hue
of the Kalahari?
3.
Was it the color of
her stark eyes, dark
as a North Star night?
Or the color of a
candle illuminating
a train traveling
underground?
Was it a deep-rebel
Maroon, rich like a
warrior's melanin
insurrecting
the indigenous
resistance
to colonialism?
4.
Was it the color
of matrimony?
Two crayons
coloring in and out
the lines of love?
The color of
emancipation?
The color of their
land bought
by Draggon Bank?
A pasture as green
as an evening in the
Eden of Ethiopia?
5.
Was it the color of:
Pride?
Strength?
Courage?
Charisma?
Wisdom?
Conviction?
Involution?
Companionship?
Direction?
Guidance?
Purpose?
6.
Or was it the color
of her name? The
color of a Mandinka
woman? The color
of ether? Existence?
Of a Zulu Queen
armored in bronze?
A matriarch, protector,
provider, nurturer?
The color of
a cornerstone
who bore witness
to the dawn of
a mountain?
The color of the
bottom of her
Foote rooted
in the soil of
American history?
7.
No, I believe
her favorite color
was the color
of her daughter,
Chloe --Greek
meaning yellow
and green;
young, green
shoots of plants
blooming in spring.
Impossible to Overcome
By Owen Shapiro
I was not born a person.
I was born a slave
A far more subordinate version
merchandise, trapped in a body defined by its dark skin.
In a world so white,
Impossible to overcome
I did not choose this fate
A beginning did,
A sudden light
Paper and ink
So the whole world will know my name
For "My negro boy" is a name with no right
Why, it is Impossible to overcome
For the world is so cruel, the world is so white
So as the sun beats down on my skin
I am not a human, not one that lives
But a slave working his days away, like the rest of his kin
For a world of white, one that will never be his
A world of white,
I suppose that's the way it is
A chance at freedom
As I slip the shiny, metal ring on my finger,
As I feel the water rub against my dark forehead, it lingers
I feel it,
Freewill
Just a small bit, of freedom
Even as I am trapped in a world of white
Impossible to overcome
A strange inclination
Though I am not human
Liberation
A final conclusion
As the dirt encroaches upon my dark skin
My body succumbs.
The world turns black
And I overcome
Comments