#SalonatStowe: Meet the Featured Guests

This Thursday, join us for our latest Salon at Stowe: Combatting Environmental Racism.

Rev. Steve Camp
Senior Pastor, Faith Congregational Church
Rev. Steve Camp is the Senior Pastor at Faith Congregational Church in Hartford. He has served there since 2009. Born and raised in the Hartford area, he grew up in Faith Congregational Church. He graduated from Bethune-Cookman College and Chicago Theological Seminary. He has served congregations in Ohio and in the Southern Conference of the United Church of Christ.

Rev. Camp has been a member of the Executive Council of the United Church of Christ, the Council of Conference Ministers, and the Cornerstone Fund (the UCC banking entity) of the national setting of the United Church of Christ. He is also an active part of the Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice (MRSEJ) and the UCC United Black Christians. Rev. Camp recently returned from a trip to Flint, Michigan, where he investigated and brought relief to those impacted by the water crisi.

Rev. Kari Nicewander
Senior Pastor, Immanuel Congregational Church
Rev. Kari Nicewander is the Senior Pastor at Immanuel Congregational Church in Hartford. She has served there since 2015. Kari grew up in Michigan and graduated from the University of Michigan and Harvard Divinity School. She has served congregations in Michigan and Massachusetts and prior to coming to Hartford, served in a ministry in Zambia. She is married to Joel DeJong and they have two children. With Rev. Camp, Rev. Nicewander has also recently returned from Flint.

Sharon Lewis
Sharon Lewis is the Executive Director of the CT Coalition for Environmental Justice. She is committed to working for environmental justice in Hartford and in the state of CT. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and worked for corporate America in the reinsurance and insurance industry for seventeen years. In the 1990's she left a lucrative career in the reinsurance industry  to become a social activist in the environmental justice movement fighting for the rights of low income and communities of color to be free from pollution and to have equal access to the decision making process with regard to environmental policies. 

The Salon will begin at 5:30 pm is the Stowe Center Visitor Center. What questions will you ask the featured guests? Share in the comments below!

#StoweSyllabus: What We're Reading this Week

Current events and articles that got us thinking over the week!

272 slaves were sold to save Georgetown. What does it owe to their descendants?
Rachel L. Swarns, April 16, 2016, The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0 

The secret history of the photo at the center of the Black Confederate myth
Adam Serwer, April17, 2016, BuzzFeed
https://www.buzzfeed.com/adamserwer/the-secret-history-of-the-photo-at-the-center-of-the-black-c?bftw&utm_term=.bm4Vp41A3#.xvXa7RjmB  

Was Harriet Beecher Stowe an abolitionist?
Manisha Sinha, April 14, 2016, We’re History
http://werehistory.org/stowe/   

Working class heroes
Jelani Cobb, April 25, 2016, The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/25/learning-to-talk-about-class 

#StoweSyllabus: What We're Reading this Week

Articles and current events that got us thinking over the week!

We need a decolonized not a “diverse” education
Zoé Samudzi, March 29, 2016, The Harlot
http://harlot.media/articles/1058/we-need-a-decolonized-not-a-diverse-education 

Art as resistance, part 1
Jamilah Pitts, March 17, 2016, Teaching Tolerance
http://www.tolerance.org/blog/art-resistance-part-1  

Art as resistance, part 2
Jamilah Pitts, April 12, 2016, Teaching Tolerance
http://www.tolerance.org/blog/art-resistance-part-2 

There is nothing accidental about school segregation
Jake Blumgart, April 12, 2016, Slate
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2016/04/an_interview_with_matt_delmont_author_of_why_busing_failed_on_why_segregated.html 

What are your reactions to the pieces? What articles, news pieces, or video-clips have you come across over the week? Let us know, below!

#SalonatStowe: Meet the Featured Guests

Join us this evening for Student Activists Speak Out, a Salon at Stowe on the power and significance of student activism. Featured guests for the program include Tony Roy, social studies teacher from CT River Academy and three student activists from CT River Academy.

Check out these links below for background reading on student activism:

Student Activism is Serious Business
Roxane Gay, November 11, 2015, The New Republic
https://newrepublic.com/article/123431/student-activism-serious-business

The Other Student Activists
Melinda D. Anderson, November 23, 2015, The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/student-activism-history-injustice/417129/?trk=pulse-det-art_view_ext

What will you ask the featured guests? Are you a student activist or activist yourself? Share your thoughts in the comments below and attend the Salon this evening! The Salon will begin at 5:30 pm in the Stowe Center Visitor Center.

Having Their Say at the Stowe Center with Hartford Stage

Today, at 12:00 pm the Stowe Center welcomes the actors and director of Hartford Stage's latest performance, Having Our Say.

Synopsis of Having Our Say:
103-year-old Sadie Delany and 101-year-old Bessie Delany were the daughters of a former slave, grew up in the Jim Crow South, lived in Harlem during its renaissance, and had professional careers as a teacher and a dentist, respectively. While they make dinner to remember their father’s birthday, the two sisters tell us the story of the last century, as they lived it. History at its most immediate, and poignant.

In addition to the performance, Hartford Stage created an ancillary project called Having Their Say: Generations in Conversation. The project is an oral history designed to preserve past stories through interviews. Hartford Stage gathered a group of local African-American female students to partner with 10 African-American women over the age of 70 to present an intergenerational dialogue.

The program will feature lead actors Olivia Cole and Brenda Pressley, director Jade King Carroll, and  Hartford Stage Artistic Director Fiona Kyle. Videos of the interviews will be featured during the program.


What do you think we can learn from intergenerational conversation? How can learning about the lives of those older than us, impact our understanding of today? What power does oral history hold? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and share your questions at the program!