The Amistad Trial and the Old State House. Connecticut’s Old State House (review)

Connecticut's Old State House is best-known for two stories of national significance: the prosecution of educator Prudence Crandall and the 1839 trials to determine the fates of the fifty-three Africans who were captured and illegally bound into slavery on la Amistad. These stories have preserved a misleading white savior narrative at the site, which the newly designed tour seeks to rectify. By switching the focus from white individuals and their actions to the people of color and their aspirations, circumstances, and actions, the Old State House aims to re-center the narrative as one that interrogates traditional sources of power, affirms the perspectives of historically marginalized groups, and makes the interpretation relevant to twenty-first-century audiences. On a recent visit to the site, these efforts were demonstrated effectively with many gestures toward continuing work on educational programming for audiences of all ages.¹

Maintaining the traditional structure of a historic building tour, the experience, offered during the 2019 National Council on Public History annual meeting, began in the central hall with the familiar political, architectural, and social history context. Diversions into new material began with the critique of the white savior narrative and the rationale for civics education in this space. The Old State House, with its historic role in state and national legal processes, continues to be a site that illustrates the complex nature of governance and authority. City owned, state managed, and interpreted by the nonprofit Connecticut Democracy Center, the site is rich with civic and social history and paints a complicated picture of the relationship between citizens and their government.

A guiding principle of the new interpretation is that government at all levels sometimes fails its citizens. This point was often emphasized as we moved through the chambers and courtrooms, but it was freshly poignant as we reached the top of the steps to stand under the original statue of Justice. Moved inside for preservation, the statue's history of vandalism, symbolism, neglect, and abuse perfectly foreshadowed the new narratives of the site.

Statue of Justice inside the Old State House. John Stanwood, 1827. (Photo by author)

In the Senate chamber, seated comfortably on benches, we observed original late-eighteenth-century furnishings but spent most of our time conversing about the racial inequities in our society that are a legacy of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century legal changes that occurred in this very room. The 1818 removal of black male suffrage in Connecticut and the suffrage struggles of Native Americans were topics of discussion between visitors and our tour guide, executive director Sally Whipple. This facilitated dialogue gave space for members of the audience to share their personal reflections on race in the historical context and in their contemporary lives. Though our group was stacked with public historians eager to engage with their guide and each other, the tour's format modeled contemplation, reflection, and sharing that would have spurred any visitor to engage actively with the tour's themes. The guide primed the group to consider the stories of Prudence Crandall's school and la Amistad's prisoners in the framework of racial equity and justice.

The House Chamber served as the setting for our conversation about Prudence Crandall and her 1830s school for black girls. Crandall's decision to open a school for which she faced legal prosecution and social persecution led to her later lionization as the "Official State Heroine." However, our guide asked us to consider the perspective of the black girls who asked for and sought out their educations in the 1830s. Ideas about slavery and freedom were particularly fraught in Connecticut at that time, a period when black codes were passed and repealed and an enslaved woman, Nancy Jackson, sued for and won her freedom.