Grating the Nutmeg

Lives of the state's LGBTQ citizens have moved from being hidden and solitary to claiming visible, powerful, valuable, and contributing places in society. In this episode, Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored, interviews CCSU Assistant Professor of History William J. Mann about when and how the LGBTQ movement started in Connecticut, what legislative goals and strategies drove the movement, and what the current goals are for the LGBTQ movement. Mann discusses the impact of AIDS and the ways that the LGBTQ community supported its members. He describes how his students helped to research and uncover the people and events highlighted in the online exhibition, "Historic Timeline of Connecticut's LGBTQ Community." Mann wrote CT Explored's "A Brief History of Connecticut's Gay Media," available at www.ctexplored.org/a-brief-history-of-connecticut-gay-media/.

Mann teaches LGBTQ history, film history, and the history of AIDS. He is the director of CCSU's LGBTQ Center. From 1989-1995, he was the editor and later publisher of Metroline, the state's LGBTQ newsmagazine, and coordinator of Your Turf, the first LGBTQ youth group in the state. In 1989, along with Terri Reid, William founded the long-running queer film festival known today as Out Film CT. He is author of 12 books, many on American film history.

Find the LGBTQ Timeline at https://chs.org/lgbtq/. It is a partnership between Central Connecticut State University and the Connecticut Historical Society, and is based on the work of Richard Nelson, CCSU 403 students in 2019, and will continue to grow.

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LGBTQ Icons

Ann Stanback- https://www.ctexplored.org/women-who-changed-the-world/

https://www.ctexplored.org/an-early-advocate-for-connecticuts-gay-community/

https://www.ctexplored.org/site-lines-a-love-story-at-the-palmer-warner-house/

https://www.ctexplored.org/philip-johnsons-50-year-experiment-in-architecture-and-landscape/

https://www.ctexplored.org/stonington-poet-james-merrills-house/

This episode was produced by Mary Donohue, Assistant Publisher of Connecticut Explored, the magazine of Connecticut history and mixed by Patrick O'Sullivan.

Mary Donohue has documented Connecticut's architecture, built environment and popular culture for over 30 years. Contact her at [email protected]

In this episode, Josh Shanley – firefighter, paramedic, and Emergency Management Director for Northampton, Massachusetts, talks about the Great Connecticut RIver Flood of 1936, its devastating effects, long-term consequences, and the message it has for a world in climate change. Based on his new book, Connecticut River Valley Flood of 1936 from the History Press.

Connecticut Historical Society's Natalie Belanger talks with labor historian Steve Thornton of The Shoeleather History Project about Black baseball in Connecticut. Thornton is the author of Connecticut Explored's "African American Greats in Connecticut Baseball," Summer 2018.

Read or Watch More!To learn more about the Negro Leagues, check out this recent talk at the CT Historical Society by Bob Kendrick, President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.

"African American Greats in Connecticut Baseball," Summer 2018

Shoeleather History Project at https://shoeleatherhistoryproject.com/

Follow the Greater Hartford Twilight Baseball League here.

This episode was produced by Natalie Belanger and engineered by Patrick O'Sullivan.

Photo Credit: Johnny "Schoolboy" Taylor and Savitt Gems business manager Bernie Ellovich, 1930s-40s. Connecticut Historical Society 1990.51.988

No one knows more about transportation in Connecticut than historian, civil engineer, and highway and transportation planner Richard DeLuca. In this recent virtual lecture for Cheshire Public Library, promoting his new, second volume on Connecticut transportation history Paved Roads and Public Money (Wesleyan University Press), DeLuca underscores the inseparable relationships among population, technology, and the environment.

Visitors have been enchanted by the thousands of soft and fragrant rose petals in Elizabeth Park's Rose Garden since it opened in 1904. Climbing roses intertwined in overhead garlands, hybrid tea roses and heritage roses in every color symbolize romance, friendship, and passion.

Elizabeth Park on the Hartford-West Hartford border is home to the country's oldest public rose garden. Visitors by the thousands come to stroll in the rose garden and sit in the vine-covered gazebo. Generations of prom goers as well as wedding parties have had their photos taken there.

But how did Elizabeth Park become the public park it is today? Find out how Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of landscape architecture, a contested will and a beloved wife are all part of the story.

Mary Donohue interviews Elizabeth Park's Rosarian Stephen Scanniello about all things roses.

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Sign up for our free newsletter ctexplored.substack.com

https://www.ctexplored.org/connecticuts-historic-rose-gardens/

https://www.ctexplored.org/off-the-streets-into-the-parks/

This episode was produced by Mary Donohue, Assistant Publisher of Connecticut Explored, the magazine of Connecticut history and engineered by Patrick O'Sullivan.

Donohue has documented Connecticut's architecture, built environment and popular culture for over 30 years. Contact her at [email protected]

Visit www.elizabethparkct.org

Sometimes tombs become crime scenes. State Archaeologist Emeritus Nick Bellantoni talks with Walt Woodward about two such cases in which he was called in to do forensic archaeology, and the process of doing historic detective work in pursuit of justice. He also provides the latest developments concerning the discovery of revolutionary war skeletons in a basement in Ridgefield in December 2019.

In 1969, women were allowed entry to undergraduate study at Yale for the first time. Their experience was not the same as their male peers enjoyed. Isolated from one another, singled out as oddities and sexual objects, and barred from many of the school's privileges, the young women nonetheless met the challenge of being first and changed Yale in ways it had never anticipated.

Mary Donohue interviews historian and Yale alumna Anne Gardiner Perkins, author of Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant and New Haven leader Constance Royster, one of Yale's first women undergrads. Anne Gardiner Perkins is an award-winning historian and higher education expert, and the author of Yale Needs Women, which won the 2020 Connecticut Book Award. Ms. Royster holds a J.D. from Rutgers University Law School – Newark, and a B.A. cum laude from Yale University.

Read more!"UConn Law: The Trailblazing Bessye Bennett," Spring 2014 "Yale's Grace Murray Hopper College," Fall 2017

This episode was produced by Mary Donohue, Assistant Publisher of Connecticut Explored, the magazine of Connecticut history and engineered by Patrick O'Sullivan.

Ms. Donohue has documented Connecticut's architecture, built environment and popular culture for over 30 years. Contact her at [email protected]

What secrets about the past can an ancient tomb reveal? The answers, as State Archaeologist emeritus Nick Bellantoni explains, are many, surprising, and incredibly interesting.

In this conversation about Nick's new book, And So the Tomb Remained: Exploring Archaeology and Forensic Science in Connecticut's Historical Family Mausolea, State Historian Walt Woodward and Bellantoni, who in his 30 plus years as state archaeologist entered more tombs that any other archeologist, talk about Nick's experiences doing restoration, recovery work, and crimonal investigations in the tombs of some of Connecticut's oldest and most powerful families.

Fifty years ago, Ericka Huggins and Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers were on trial for their lives in New Haven. In this episode, Natalie Belanger of the Connecticut Historical Society takes a look back at the New Haven Black Panther trials, using some of the many primary sources available.

To learn more about the New Haven Black Panther Trials:

To see Robert Templeton's courtroom sketches of the Black Panther Trials, go here.

The trial transcripts are available digitally through Yale Law School's Lillian Goldman Law Library.

The online exhibit, "Bulldog and Panther: The 1970 May Day Rally and Yale," at Yale University Library, covers the events leading up to the May Rally, and its aftermath.

The recording of Alex Rackely's interrogation can be heard via Youtube through this link to the New Haven Independent's reporting of its discovery. Editor Paul Bass co-wrote, with Douglas W. Rae, Murder in the Model City: The Black Panthers, Yale, and the Redemption of a Killer.

Yohuru Williams's essay, "The New Haven Black Panther Trials," appears in African American Connecticut Explored, published through a collaboration between Connecticut Explored and the Amistad Center for Art & Culture. Williams is also the author of Black Politics, White Power: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Black Panthers in New Haven. And in these two Connecticut Explored articles online below:

https://www.ctexplored.org/the-hartford-chapter-of-the-black-panthers-an-interview-with-butch-lewis/

https://www.ctexplored.org/the-new-haven-black-panther-trials/

You can learn more about this topic by tuning in to a virtual talk by Dr. Yohuru Williams, historian and founder of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, on February 24, 2021. "No Haven: Civil Rights, Black Power and Black Panthers in New Haven," hosted by the Connecticut Historical Society, will be streamed live on Crowdcast and available after for re-watch. Click here to register.

Natalie Belanger is the Adult Programs Manager at the Connecticut Historical Society. You can contact her at [email protected].

Produced by Natalie Belanger and engineered by Patrick O'Sullivan.

Photo Credit: Black Panther Community News Service, CHS Collection, 2018.22.2

This lecture was presented by Dr. Leon Chameides for the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, Voices of Hope, and The Emanuel Synagogue. Learn more about Polish-Jewish history and how our guest Dr. Leon Chameides survived the Nazi occupation of Poland as a Jewish child. Despite the fact that many American Jews trace their family to Poland, there are many misconceptions about Polish history and the history of Polish-Jewish relations. Dr. Leon Chameides was born in Poland in 1935 and spent the war years hidden in a Ukrainian Greek-Catholic monastery. He went to England in 1946 and came to the United States in 1949. He was Director of Pediatrics at Hartford Hospital for 10 years.

To read more about Dr. Chameide's life and family, look for his book Strangers in Many Lands, available on Amazon books. For more information about Hartford's Jewish history, go to the website of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford at https://jhsgh.org/ and for more about Connecticut's connection to the Holocaust, go to the website of Voices of Hope at http://ctvoicesofhope.org/

For more about Connecticut's military history, go to https://www.ctexplored.org/connecticut-at-war/ and to read Dr. Chameides story in the Fall issue of Connecticut Explored, the magazine of Connecticut history, go to https://www.ctexplored.org/a-jewish-childs-experience-of-war/

This episode was produced by Mary Donohue, Assistant Publisher of Connecticut Explored and engineered by Patrick O'Sullivan.

Mary M. Donohue is the Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored. She has documented Connecticut's architecture, built environment and popular culture for over 30 years. Contact her at https://www.granthousect.com/