Andrew W. Kahrl, "Free the Beaches"

Author Talk & Book Signing

Free the Beaches

The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for America's Most Exclusive Shoreline

August 9, 2018

During the long, hot summers of the late 1960s to 1970s, anti-poverty activist Ned Coll of Connecticut campaigned to open some of America’s most exclusive beaches to minorities and the urban poor. Coll noted that the state permitted public access to only seven miles of its 253-mile shoreline and that nearly all of the state’s coast was held privately, for the most part by white, wealthy residents.

Free the Beaches tells the story of the controversial protester who gathered a band of determined African American mothers and children and challenged their exclusion.

Special guest: Lebert “Gee” Lester, whose childhood story is told in the book.

Andrew W. Kahrl is associate professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia.

Location Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

Doors Open 5 PM

Program 5:30-7 PM

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Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.