People who live in glass houses — or those built by slave owners — should not throw stones.
Fred Cantor is a longtime Westporter. and a Staples High School Class of 1971 graduate. Passionate about local history, he co-curated a 2017 exhibit — “The High School That Rocked!” at the then-Westport Historical Society.
Fred writes:
Having read the complete letter submitted by the Westport Museum for History and Culture, I think its critique of the River of Names mural has gone too far.
Quite frankly, it seems that the Museum has failed in a material way to practice what it preaches.
The inconsistency seems to be blatant with the way the WMHC criticizes the omission of information about Ebenezer Coley on the tile wall — which clearly was never meant to be a comprehensive history of Westport — and then the way the Museum omits or otherwise buries the same information on its own website.
The section of the WMHC letter to the Westport Library re Ebenezer Coley states:
With respect to the tile #7 (Curran) 1705 — Tidal mill for emerging West Indies trade; 1775 — Coley Store; Tile #13 (Curran) 1790 E. (Ebenezer) Jesup Builds Wharf on Saugatuck’s east Bank; Tile # 10 (Curran) 1775 E. (Ebenezer) Coley builds saltbox home, shop and wharf. The West Indies trade specifically refers to the Transatlantic Slave Trade in which local farmers and millers produced goods to sell to West Indian slave plantations. These plantations provided the greatest source of income for men like Coley and Jesup — who were among those who owned the greatest number of enslaved people in the town.
The WMHC’s headquarters — the Bradley-Wheeler house — happens to have been built by Ebenezer Coley. But visitors to the Museum’s website would have no clue of that unless they clicked through a number of links.
The primary “About WM link” on the WMHC site offers only the following background information on the Bradley-Wheeler House
The FAQ link on the site states simply: “Our headquarters building was originally a 5-bay Colonial House built around 1795.” Two more sentences follow re the structure (with no mention of Ebenezer Coley).
Visitors to the WMHC site will only become aware of the Coley family connection to the Museum headquarters and the Coley family’s involvement in slavery if they manage to reach the “Westport Driving Tour” portion of the site, and then click on the icons for the Bradley-Wheeler House and Coley’s Saugatuck Store.
Even then, there is still not all of the information the WMHC criticized the River of Names mural for omitting — most notably that “These plantations provided the greatest source of income for men like Coley and Jesup — who were among those who owned the greatest number of enslaved people in the town.”
It strikes me as very harsh to criticize the River of Names mural — which again, was never meant to be a comprehensive history of Westport — for failing to include all of the Coley family background when a) the WMHC website seemingly fails to do so as well and b) the family background that is included is almost treated like disclosures that are buried in small print in certain ads we are all familiar with.
I wrote 2 emails in the past 2 days to Museum executive cirector Ramin Ganeshram. One stated in part: “Why not disclose up front in the ‘About WM’ section — where you have a write-up about the Bradley-Wheeler House — the fact that the WMHC’s headquarters have such a close connection to the history of slavery in America? Wouldn’t such a disclosure be precisely in sync with the mission statement the WMHC emphasizes on its home page?”
I have so far failed to receive an answer.
When Katleman was at MCA his boss, Hollywood icon Lew Wasserman, wanted him to acquire the game show giant Goodson-Todman Productions. “This meant weekends at Westport, Connecticut with Mark,” he writes.
