Finding Lost People: Dr. Warren Perry’s Work Featured in “Smithsonian”

Following his successful work at the African Burial Ground in Manhattan a few years ago, Associate Professor of Anthropology Warren Perry has been ready for a new challenge — and he’s found it closer to home. Most recently, he has uncovered new evidence of African slaves who lived, worked, died, and were buried in New Salem, Connecticut, some 200 years ago. That work, which is revising modern understanding of slavery and the African presence in New England, is featured in the November issue of Smithsonian magazine. Writer Lucretia Bingham observes that Perry’s “investigation of old grave sites in New England is unearthing hard truths about Yankees and slavery.”

“A few years ago,” Perry recalls, “I received a letter from a local historian in Colchester, who was researching the African presence in that part of the state. He sent me old newspaper articles and other items which I found so intriguing that I convinced one of my former CCSU students, Gerald Sawyer, to work at the New Salem site for his doctoral research project.” 

The presence of an African slave burial ground in Connecticut is not rare, Perry notes, only inadequately documented: “The captive presence has been marginalized or erased from American history, particularly in the northern states. This has become evident in the African burial ground research that we’re doing. From the physical evidence we have determined that about 60 slave families were brought to this part of Connecticut. We have found remnants of housing for them, as well as occasional written references to their presence.”

Patiently working with trowels and sifters, Perry, Sawyer, and a group of CCSU anthropology students are rediscovering the “lost people” of Connecticut. “Combining archeology with oral traditions maintained by local African Americans and Native Americans, we are piecing together a chapter left out of the history books,” Perry says. 

“Like the slaves used in the Southern states, the captive African workers in Connecticut were part of a global agricultural business. The Southern plantations generally produced one product and shipped it to various places. Conversely, the provisional plantations in the North raised wheat and other materials to be shipped mostly to the Caribbean. One key to this interconnection is the type of African captive workers’ graves we have found,” Perry notes. “They are just like burial sites we have seen in Ghana and the Caribbean, in the way in which they were dug and the way in which the bodies were placed.”

The CCSU professor is quick to point out, however, that his team’s excavations do not disturb the sanctity of the graves. “Wego down about 10 or 20 centimeters, looking for soil discolorations, which indicate that the likelihood of burials beneath the site. The more sites we open in this way, the more we learn,” Perry states. 

His protégé Sawyer is quoted in the article: “Written histories are often biased, but the material record that has been left in the ground by our ancestors reveals the truth. Eventually we hope to learn how these people lived, how they died, how they resisted their captors. Their voices are in the things we find here.”

Bingham’s article on Perry’s work at the Connecticut slave excavations can also be found at Smithsonian magazine’s website: http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues01/nov01/poi.html

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