A Black Ecological Return to Charter Oak Terrace

The Hartford History Lecture Series is back for 2024. The third lecture in the series will feature Dr. Channon Miller, Assistant Professor of American Studies and History at Trinity College. As much as water protects, nourishes, and sustains Black children’s lives, it also restrains, suffocates, and degrades them. The residents of Hartford’s Charter Oak Terrace confronted a water-based ecological catastrophe in the 1960s. A flooding river—channeled by municipal neglect, class inequality, and racial segregation—drowned several children. The neighborhood’s mothers forged the Association of Concerned Parents of Charter Oak (ACP) and demanded that the city halt the nearby highway construction that propelled the river’s overflow. Dr. Miller will excavate the unwritten history of the Black women-led ACP and chronicle an early rendering of a local environmental justice movement. The Hartford History Lecture Series is a collaboration between Connecticut State Community College Capital’s Hartford Heritage Project, the Connecticut Democracy Center at Connecticut’s Old State House, and the History Department ad UConn. It is supported by funding through CT Humanities in alignment with the America 250 | CT Commission.