Prince Mortimer Avenue Dedication Ceremony on Feb 1st!

Written By John Mills

The Prince Mortimer Avenue Dedication Ceremony is scheduled! It will occur on February 1st at 10am, kicking off Black History Month!

If you recall, Rapallo Avenue sits on the approximate location of the walkway that led away from the home of Prince Mortimer's enslaver, which is where Prince lived.  Prince would have walked that path every day on his way to work at the enslavers rope making building on Main street. Now, Rapallo Avenue will also hold an honorary name of Prince Mortimer Avenue.  

Last year, I worked with Dr. Jesse Nasta of Wesleyan University and Middletown Municipal Historian, Debby Shapiro, to get a Honorary Street Name ordinance passed through Middletown Common Council. Using that ordinance, we submitted the proposal for the first Honorary Street name in the city to be Prince Mortimer Avenue. On September 3rd, 2024, Middletown Common Council approved it!

For our unveiling ceremony, Community Health Center in Middletown has graciously offered their facility! The entire ceremony will be held in their beautiful events room, which has direct visibility to the street sign while also keeping us all warm and indoors! The Community Health Center building is located at 675 Main Street in Middletown.

Community Health Center has also offering free parking in their lot to those that attend. Their parking lot is located at 34 Rapallo Avenue, ironically within yards of where Prince Mortimer lived and was enslaved. Therefore, those who park in the lot will be essentially walking the same path Prince did everyday to get to Main street.

At the event, we will also be unveiling a commissioned portrait of Prince which will be on display in Middletown town hall for the full month of February!

This is a free event! If interested, please register HERE.

Hope to see you there! Thank you, and God Bless.

John

John Mills

Originally from San Diego, John Mills is a technologist by trade, but an equity advocate and independent scholar by passion. The descendant of both southern and northern enslaved, John focuses on unearthing little known people and stories of this country’s history in slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. John presents research through the lens and perspective of a descendant, with intent to inspire understanding and empathy, a means to inspire good, God fearing people, now armed with information, to look into whether they may be unwittingly aligning to biases resulting from the reverberating effects of a past time. John is a member of the Connecticut Freedom Trail and a member of the Webb Deane Stevens Museum Council. John is also working with an international team funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in an effort to deliver transformational impact on digital methods in cultural institutions...a means to decolonize museums. Finally, John is working with the state of Connecticut, business leaders and scholars in Middletown, CT to honor and memorialize a former enslaved individual by the name of Prince Mortimer.

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