Today in 1996, yielding to intense and unrelenting pressure from the university administration, graduate student teachers at Yale University finally turned in final grades for the classes they had taught the previous semester — an action that ended an incredibly tense standoff over teacher compensation and labor rights closely watched by students and university…
Tag: education
December 29: A Timely Move in a Great Depression — Preserving America’s Golden Age of Sail
The village of Mystic, Connecticut — which is actually not its own town, but a borough straddling the two towns of Groton and Stonington — has been associated with sailing, fishing, and shipbuilding for hundreds of years. The village’s earliest shipbuilding enterprises date to the late 17th century, when English settlers set up shop…
December 5: America’s First Law School’s First Hire
As a professor at the first law school established in the United States, Connecticut legal luminary James Gould helped educate some of the most important legal minds in early 19th-century America. Gould was born in Branford, Connecticut today in 1770. His parents initially doubted his promise as a scholar because of his exceptionally poor…
November 25: From News Seller to News Maker, “La Madrina” of Hartford
María Colón Sánchez arrived in Hartford at the age of 28 in 1954, one of thousands of Puerto Ricans who moved to Connecticut in search of better economic opportunity during the mid-20th century. Within a few years, she had saved up enough money to open a convenience store, Maria’s News Stand, on Albany Avenue,…
October 30: Yung Wing –– Immigrant, Path-Breaking Student, Missionary, Educator, Outcast & Refugee
Born in 1828 to a poor farming family in Macau, Yung Wing was sent to attend foreign missionary schools in southern China at a young age. His parents hoped that learning English would lead young Wing to a more prosperous career path. In 1847, when Yung was 19 years old, he accompanied his former…
September 28: An Ag School with Ambition Planted at Mansfield
Today in 1881, the small agricultural school that would later become the state of Connecticut’s flagship university held its first classes in a former orphanage building located in Mansfield. The Storrs Agricultural School, consisting of just three faculty members and thirteen students when it first opened, offered young men the opportunity to gain advanced…
August 16: The Bar Unbarred — Connecticut’s First Woman Lawyer
Today in 1843, Mary Hall was born in Marlborough, Connecticut. Growing up on a farm in antebellum America, when high Victorian culture placed an increasingly stringent emphasis on female domesticity, made her perhaps one of the most unlikely candidates to defy gender norms and become the first woman in Connecticut to be admitted to…
June 29: In the Middle of a World War, a Vote for History
Connecticut history made history today in 1943, when Governor Ray Baldwin signed a law setting new standards for citizenship education in Connecticut schools. The new law required that any college or grade school receiving state funding — public or private –had to include a comprehensive study of American history and government in its curriculum….
June 27: Prudence Crandall Arrested & Jailed
In 1831, Prudence Crandall, with the support and approval of the local citizenry, opened the Canterbury Female Boarding School to educate daughters of wealthy Eastern Connecticut families. After a successful inaugural year, Crandall received a request from 20-year-old Sarah Harris, the daughter of a prosperous free African-American farmer and his wife, to attend the…
June 26: Science and Embroidery Stitched Together in Litchfield
Today in 1767, education pioneer Sarah Pierce was born in Litchfield. Her father died when Sarah was a teenager, and as a result, the family was financially pressed. In response, Sarah’s brother sent her to New York to learn to be a teacher. Having acquired that ability, he thought, she would be able to…
June 22: Connecticut-Educated Cherokee Leader Elias Boudinot Assassinated
The Cherokee leader Elias Boudinot first came to Connecticut in the 1820s to seek a formal western education at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall. Born as Gallegina Uwati into a prominent Cherokee family in 1802, he was sent north with the permission of tribal elders in hopes that his western education would help…
May 28: Preparing Connecticut Women to Exercise Their Rights as Citizens
On May 21, 1919, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of a constitutional amendment that would give American women the right to vote — legislation that would eventually become the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Even though the legislation still had to be approved by the U.S. Senate and ratified…