Fortune Mural Community Paint Day!
We will be painting a mural on the North End Rec Center in Waterbury, CT in honor of a formerly enslaved man named Fortune. The community is invited to help paint!
Fortune, his wife Dinah and their 3 children were enslaved by Preserved Porter, a Connecticut bone doctor. In 1798, Fortune slipped from a rock on the west bank of the Naugatuck river, broke his neck and drowned. At the time, dissecting cadavers was illegal; but not applying to the enslaved, Dr. Porter cut him into pieces at the riverbank. At his office, he boiled the bones so that all flesh fell off, etched labels into them and used them as a medical training tool. Dr. Porter died 6 years later, listing the bones as worth $15 ($330 today).
Prior to his death, Dr. Porter used the bones to teach anatomy to his son; who used them to teach anatomy to his grandson; who used them to teach his daughter…135 years of generational doctors and wealth.
In 1933, his name long forgotten, the family donated the bones to the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT where they were displayed next to slave tools as “Larry the Slave”; a popular exhibit shown on their postcard; not taken down until 1970 when the Museum realized this was demeaning. They stored them in the basement. The bones would remain in the basement for nearly 30 years.
In 1999, made aware of these bones in the basement, the NAACP and museum staff enlisted anthropologists and archeologists to examine them, ultimately determining this was Fortune. Based on bone density, he was a strong man who lived and worked with a broken back, hand and died of a broken neck.
On Sept. 13th, 2013, after being enslaved, a medical specimen, a museum exhibit and archeological artifact spanning 275 years, Fortune was finally freed…laid to rest at Riverside Cemetery in Waterbury, CT…next to White society of his time, something that wouldn’t have been allowed when he died.
Our Community Paint Day will be Saturday, September 7th, from 10am to 2pm. You can sign up for 1 hour slots, beginning at 10am. Feel free to sign-up for as many slots as you like!
You can sign up HERE!!!
Hope to see you there!
P.S. You can read my original Facebook posts about Fortune from February 1st of 2021 HERE.