I WILL Celebrate them…

Memorial
Written By John Mills

Last year, while state organizations planned to place wreaths on the graves of Revolutionary War soldiers during this 250th anniversary year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Esther Wallace Jackson's three brothers and brother-in-law (London Wallace, Zebulan Wallace, Joseph Wallace and Cato Sands) weren't on the list. That's because as is common for Black soldiers of the time, the whereabouts of their graves is unknown.

Well, we changed all that on Juneteenth last year when we unveiled a monument celebrating them at Simsbury Cemetery.

I swung by the cemetery tonight, and look what I saw. My ancestors deserve the world.

If you would like to help me continue in this type of work, please consider donating to my non-profit at https://alexbreanne.org/donate.

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.

https://alexbreanne.org
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The Narrative of Primus