Help Bring the Fisk Jubilee Singers Back to Connecticut!

Memorial
Written By John Mills

Sgt. Maj. Horace Loudon and Sgt. Daniel Stanley Lathrop

Last year, I published a Proof Argument identifying Jeremiah Loudin as the child of Peter and Catherine Loudon of Milford, CT. Jeremiah was the father of Frederick Loudin of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers. Jeremiah had a brother named Darius, who had a son named Horace Loudon. Horace later became the highest-ranking Black man in the 29th Connecticut Colored Infantry Regiment. 

Horace Loudon was Connecticut’s own version of Frederick Douglass, touring Connecticut, speaking in front of groups of Black men to convince them to enlist. His image is etched into the 29th Connecticut Colored Regiment monument in New Haven, although Yale’s Beinecke Library misidentified him for decades as Alexander Newton. My non-profit only recently got Yale to correct their records.

Each year in November, my non-profit organizes a walk through Hartford, commemorating the 29th Connecticut Colored Regiment parade from November 24, 1865. This year, we would like to end our walk at South Congregational Church in Hartford, where we will hold our reception. This is because The Fisk Jubilee Singers first performed in Connecticut at that very spot on January 28th, 1872. I've located current-day descendants of the Loudon's and they are flying in from Pennsylvania to speak at this event.  We have also contacted the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and they have agreed to perform if we can raise the funds for their fee and travel. 

We would like to make this a day of events that accomnplish the following:

  • Retrace the Connecticut Colored Regiment's 1865 parade route.

  • Reintroduce Connecticut to the historic Loudon family.

  • Share the Loudon family's origins of enslavement in Milford, CT.

  • Share the correction of Horace Loudon's misidentification.

  • Share Frederick Loudin becoming leader of the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

  • Celebrate the living descendants.

  • The Fisk Jubilee Singers returning to Connecticut to honor their roots.

I have raised $6,000 for the event, but the total cost will be closer to $25,000. Please consider helping us raise the funds for this historic event. If you can, please donate at https://alexbreanne.org/donate.

Thank you in advance, 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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