WITNESS STONES INSTALLATION CEREMONY ON GUILFORD GREEN
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November 2, 2017 @ 9:30 am - 12:00 pm
INVITATION TO THE WITNESS STONES INSTALLATION CEREMONY
Location of Witness Stone Installation – Hyland House Guilford, CT
We want to invite everyone with interest in this project to join us on November 2nd on the Guilford Green. Students and the audience will gather at 9:30 A.M., and the ceremony will start at 9:45 A.M. for the Witness Stones Project installation ceremony…
Through research, education, and civic engagement, the Witness Stones Project seeks to restore the history and honor the humanity of the enslaved individuals who helped build our communities.
We have been working hard behind the scenes to deepen our research and broaden our understanding about racism, inequality, injustice, and intolerance in the past and how it relates to what is happening in our country today. We have also been creating an educational unit for our 8th grade Social Studies and Language Arts students that we hope to share with other communities in the future.
The educational unit is constructed around five themes of enslavement:
Dehumanization
Enslaved as Property
Paternalism
Economics of Enslavement
Human Agency and Resistance
Students will share what they learn with each other and then use the information gathered to create biographical sketches and graphic illustrations of three enslaved persons chosen for our inaugural year. Student work will be the centerpiece of the project and the program that will be created as part of the installation ceremony.
The program will start on the Green where introductions will be made, music will be performed, and speakers will invite us to witness the importance of remembering our history of enslavement and the persons whose freedom was taken or withheld from them. Students will share their stories as an act of rehumanization of those whose humanity was stripped from them for profit. Stones will be placed in front of historic building at locations where Moses, Phillis, and Candace lived to bear witness to our past and those who helped build our communities. We will restore the color to the historic fabric of our community. We will remember the past with a goal of equality, justice, and toleration today.