The Case for Reparations

Salons at Stowe

The Case for Reparations

May 19, 2016

Inspired by Stowe Prize winner Ta-Nehisi Coates‘s article, “The Case for Reparations,” Stacey Queen, Education Associate at The Amistad Center for Art & Culture, Shawn Salvant, Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, and Woody Doane, Professor of Sociology at the University of Hartford, led the conversation. Reparations compensation for descendants of individuals enslaved in the U.S. Ms. Queen and Professor Doane traced the history of racism in the U.S., from slavery to Jim Crow to housing segregation to mass incarceration, and the ways this history causes vast disparities in income, education, and social location between black and white Americans. Coates argued that this history justifies reparations to address historic and contemporary inequities. Professor Salvant said that conversations on reparations stall because people focus on the difficulty or impossibility of acting on reparations.

Inspiration to Action

Educate yourself on the history of slavery and segregation in the U.S. and share this history with others
Understand the legacy of racism in the U.S. and how it affects the present
Talk to others, particularly white people, about race and racism

Location Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

Doors Open 5:30 - 7 PM

Program 5:30 - 7 PM

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School Group Interest Form

School Group Interest Form 2023

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Adult Group Interest Form

Group Tour Interest Form 2022

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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.