Teaching Connecticut’s Shade Tobacco Industry

For three months UCONN professors Anne Gebelein, Fiona Vernal, Jason Oliver Chang, and University of Michigan PhD Candidate Elena Rosario have worked with Connecticut teachers, students and public historians to develop new and accessible teaching materials related to the history of Agricultural Labor in Connecticut’s Shade Tobacco Industry.
Join us as we explore how one can teach this subject to foster a deeper understanding of Connecticut’s agricultural history, demographic changes in labor processes, the state’s connections to global economic dynamics, and migration and identity formation in New England.
The BLACK & LATINO HISTORY PROJECT is committed to organizing professional development workshops and resources to support and extend Connecticut’s high school course in Black and Latino History. The BLHP invites students, teachers, and academic and public historians to build a more inclusive history of the United States to better understand the struggles, setbacks, and victories that Black and Latinx people have encountered and continue to encounter, as we strive to build “a more perfect union.”
Organized by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, & Abolition at the MacMillan Center at Yale, with generous support from CT Humanities, UCONN El Instituto, & the Anti-Racist Teaching & Learning Collective.