“Not Exactly a Paradise”: Fighting Segregation in Connecticut

Most Americans associate civil rights protest with the 1950s and 1960s, but by then black Americans had resisted oppression vigorously for generations. Our current exhibition, Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow, looks at segregation and resistance from 1865 to 1920. In this program, we’ll take a closer look at how that played out in Connecticut. As a visiting minister said in a sermon at Shiloh Baptist Church in 1926, life in the North, while freer than the South,  “was not exactly a paradise” for people of color.  We’ll look at archival documents, newspaper accounts, and photographs to learn about how Jim Crow manifested itself in our state, and how people fought back.

This program is included with museum admission. Kindly RSVP at (860) 236-5621 x238 or by emailing rsvp@chs.org.

Image: Group of Women at Shiloh Baptist Church, Hartford, CT, 1916-1927, CMCH 1995.36.1194