Stirring the Ashes
A memorial event in partnership with Stopping Stones Project and Ancestral Bridges
Zebulon Prutt (1731-1802), Margaret (Peg) Bowen (1742-1992), Cesar Phelps (1752-date unknown), Rose (1761-1781), Phillis (1765-1775), Phillis (1775-1783)
September 23, 2023 2:00pm, outside at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum
On Saturday, September 23, in partnership with Ancestral Bridges, the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum will host a commemorative Stopping Stones memorial markers ceremony. Join us as we stir the ashes in remembrance of six people who were enslaved during the eighteenth century at the Porter-Phelps farmstead in Hadley, Massachusetts. Acknowledging and learning about this difficult past is necessary to live responsibly in the present and strengthens our collective responsibility to create a better future. With soulful expression through music and renowned storytellers, Onawumi Jean Moss and Dr. Shirley Jackson Whitaker, we invite all members of the community to honor the lives and share the histories of Zebulon Prutt, Cesar Phelps, Margaret (Peg) Bowen, her daughters Rosanna and Phillis, and granddaughter Phillis who were enslaved at this farmstead. This program includes Reading Frederick Douglas Together, a reading of an abridged version of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” and an opportunity to visit portions of the house that recall those who were enslaved. This event is free and open to the public and supported by grants from Mass Humanities, Mass Cultural Council, and Stopping Stones, a national initiative of the Engagement Arts Fund.
MY business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. Now is the time, the important time.
-Frederick Douglass