Written by: Nicole Ankrah & Aliyah Freeman-Johnson
Endorsed by: Matt Luyrink, Katie Cook, Anthony Lee & Joy Lee
Affiliated with Talcott Street Commemoration Project (Liberal Arts Action Lab)
It’s time for our city to make progress on publicly recognizing the significance of the Talcott Street Church
Black history is American history, so why do we so often find that narratives adding to our understanding of America are erased or subdued? Whether by accident or intention, American stories involving Black communities are frequently overlooked, leaving critical chapters of our communal heritage untold.
Black history is American history. And what’s more American than community? America has a tendency to ignore the fact that outside of our intrinsic differences, we all share a collective community where our individual and shared histories are rooted. However, when we fail to acknowledge the significance of the narratives of those whose history is systematically erased from our collective memory, we create a fractured and incomplete historical account.
Talcott Street Church is an example of a church that has profoundly impacted America and the freedom of Black people. As the first Black church in Hartford, Connecticut, and among one of the earliest Black Congregational churches in America, its existence as a spiritual refuge for African Americans denied seating in the sanctuaries of existing White churches in the area makes it a site of empowerment and spiritual autonomy. By creating their own sacred space to worship, the members of the church – which included significant writers, educators, and activists like Rev. Hosea Easton, Rev. James W.C. Pennington, Ann Plato, Augustus Washington, and James Mars – reclaimed their right to worship freely, rejecting the exclusionary practices of White churches that segregated them, forcing them to have to sit in “Negro pews,” in the back of the church, and far away from White congregants.
In the context of the Second Great Awakening, a religious revival movement that took place during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Talcott Street Church stands as a symbol of widespread religious enthusiasm, salvation, and communion with God—a profound spiritual rebirth. For African Americans, individuals who were denied their dignity and self-determination in all sectors of life, having a space in which they are able to worship freely, express their faith, and come together as a community was a revolutionary act, making the church worthy of living in our collective memory today. The church embodies resistance, abolition, community and self-reliance. Without the blood, sweat, and tears of its congregation, Hartford would not be the city that it is. Yet, this history is often neglected, both intentionally and unintentionally.
From its inception, the members of Talcott Street Church have put the welfare of not only church go-ers, but students, parents, freedom seekers escaping enslavement and everyone in between. The church served not only a place of worship, but as a place of higher learning, rest, empowerment and communal gathering. This space has fostered activism for both Black and Indigenous communities. From 19th century poets, educators and spiritual leaders to missionaries and revolutionaries.
Yet, the history and contributions of Talcott Street Church have been buried by the city of Hartford and the state of Connecticut. Systems of white supremacy and colonialism have erased its impact, both from the streets and from the public mind. Its original location was cleared to make way for the G Fox Building parking lot and other gentrified businesses, displacing a thriving Black community in the name of urban development.
The same city that celebrates slave apologist Stephen A Douglass with a plaque on the corner of Pearl and Main Streets has left Augustus Washington, a self-made daguerreotypist, who owned a business in the same location, uncelebrated. Washington has taken famous photos of Lydia Sigourney and John Brown, two individuals widely celebrated in American history. Black History is American history, so why are the narratives of powerful and influential men, women, and children who have made significant achievements in American history constantly being erased or subdued? Talcott Street Church should be at the forefront of education, empowerment and spiritual resistance. The responsibility of carrying on its legacy should not fall solely on the leaders and congregants of its modern-day continuation, Faith Congregational Church.
The site where the old church used to stand on Talcott and Market Street, is now a run down parking lot, and people pass by it every day without knowing its history. This is a gross injustice. We have a collective responsibility to acknowledge this great institution and keep it from falling into obscurity. This church should be included in educational curriculums, museums, and other places of higher learning. It should also be a focal point for activism and protest, a symbol of the fight for the rights of those who can’t fight for themselves.
For too long, the stories of African Americans—especially those of self-liberation, resistance, and empowerment—have been overlooked, erased, or relegated to the margins. We must no longer perpetuate the phenomenon of selective forgetting that has plagued the telling of American history, especially when it comes to the contributions of Black communities in shaping this nation. Hartford could not exist as it does today without the legacy of Talcott Street Church and its spiritual leaders and activists of the 19th century. This selective memory diminishes the full richness and understanding of our nation’s history and fails to honor the experiences, sacrifices, and achievements of those who fought for freedom, justice, and dignity in the face of systemic oppression—and those who simply existed in the spaces we now occupy.
It is time for us to break the cycle of forgetting and erasure, and to recognize, honor, and uplift the suppressed stories that have shaped not only Black communities but this state and nation as a whole, and create and share an honest historical narrative of Hartford for future generations to take pride in and hold close to them as they grow up in our historically rich city of Hartford.