Salon #1: Teaching Race History and Reading Banned Books-Conversations on Intellectual Freedom

Salon #1: Teaching Race History and Reading Banned Books

Conversations on Intellectual Freedom

June 23, 2022

Thus far in 2022, 24 states throughout the country have put forward legislation to limit how history is taught in public schools. Dozens of other states, municipalities, and local school districts, including several in Connecticut, have challenged the inclusion of some books in educational curricula and on library shelves. According to Adam Gabbatt reporting in The Guardian in April 2022, “Challenges to books, specifically books by non-white male authors, are happening at the highest rates we’ve ever seen. What is happening in this country in terms of banning books in schools is unparalleled in its frequency, intensity and success, and it is targeting race, racism, and LGBTQ+ books directly.”

In this four-part Salon series, the Stowe Center invites thoughtful conversation from a range of viewpoints about the right of intellectual freedom, the question of whose words and voices are included in public education, and how, when, and by whom such determinations are made. What books are banned? What is Critical Race Theory? What history and whose experiences are deemed unacceptable to learn about? What role do government, law, and activists play in such decisions?

Our first Salon of the series features Dr. Alexandra Freidus, who teaches in the Neag School of Education at UConn and whose research interests include school integration, youth organizing, and diverse classrooms. Dr. Freidus will be joined by Paquita Jarman-Smith, who works with the State Education Research Center (SERC) on the development of Black and Latinx curriculum for CT high schools, and Sam Lee, Head of Reference Services at the Enfield Public Library and the Chair of the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the CT Library Association. The active participation of all Salon attendees is enthusiastically encouraged!

Registration for the June Salon is open.

To register for subsequent Salons, choose a date below:

July 28

October 20

November 10

Thank you to the George A. & Grace L. Long Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., Co-Trustee, for helping to make this program possible.

Location Virtual

Doors Open 7:00 PM

Program 7:00-8:30 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.