Beyond Amistad: African American Struggle for Citizenship, 1770-1850

“The Amistad incident was a turning point in our nation’s history,” said Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. “This teacher’s institute will play a critical role in continuing the narrative on African American’s struggle for equal rights – a central part of American history – and Connecticut’s role in this effort. This funding will expand educational resources and reach as many young people as possible.”

In speaking about The Prudence Crandall Museum, a National Historic Landmark administrered by the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, “I’m so pleased to be able to share this unique and important landmark with teachers from throughout the country, and to have the opportbuity to collaborate with the staffs of the Architecture Resource Center and the other particiating historic sites in exploring the rich and diverse history of our state.”

Kazimiera Kozlowski,
Museum Curator,
The Prudence Crandall Museum

As part of the National Endowment for the Humanities We the People initiative organizations around the country were selected to provide Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops for Schoolteachers. Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops provide the opportunity for K-12 educators to engage in intensive study and discussion of important topics in American history. These one week academies give participants direct experiences in the interpretation of significant historical sites and the use of archival and other primary historical evidence. Landmark Workshops present the best scholarship on a specific landmark or related cluster of landmarks, enabling participants to gain a sense of the importance of historic places, to make connections between what they learn in the Workshop and what they teach, and to develop enhanced teaching materials for their classrooms.


The Architecture Resource Center in partnership with the Yale University Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, received $135,000 to launch the ”Beyond Amistad: African American Struggle for Citizenship, 1770-1850” program during the summer of 2007. Eighty school teachers participated in two one-week workshops to study the history of New England slavery and “to make history come alive” for their students through the study of Connecticut's historic sites, people, and resources that illuminate slavery and freedom.

“By the time the nation ratified their citizenship and right to vote with the 14th and 15th Amendments, black Americans had been intimately involved in the shaping of their country for two hundred years,” said Dr. Robert Forbes, Lecturer in History Yale University. “Beyond Amistad” will use the window of Connecticut’s historic sites to enable teachers to understand the role of African Americans in making manifest the principles of the American founding.”

Viewing the celebrated Amistad incident of 1839-41 as a catalyst and turning point, this institute explored architectural sites in Connecticut that underscore the centrality of the pre-twentieth-century African American struggle for equal rights to the larger American narrative.

For more information see: http://www.yale.edu/glc/ctlandmarks/