It was still cold and icy underfoot on Saturday, February 22, the sky clear and cloudless, as a small congregation of New Paltz citizens gathered to commemorate the lives of two slaves, Anthony and Susanna, who had lived on Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz in the cellar of a stone house, and “self-emancipated,” meaning they had tried to escape, and were recaptured. They had been purchased by the colonial settler, Louis DuBois, in 1673, the first recorded purchase of slaves in Ulster County. Their spirits, and those of many other enslaved Africans, haunts Historic Huguenot Street and the surrounding village. The descendants of the 13 “patentee” families still live here and have been slow to acknowledge that their wealth and status was built on the backs of slaves, or that the narrative of tours and signage should be updated. Small changes have accrued over the years, and then more rapidly when the Margaret Wade-Lewis Black Cultural Center, in partnership with Historic Huguenot Street, initiated a respectful collaboration sharing historical research and co-sponsoring some events.
Up first on the stage, Kara Augustine, director of public programming at Historic Huguenot Street. “Not long ago, a visitor to the site would not have realized that the Huguenot settlers had owned slaves,” she said. This reporter could hear an audible gasp as one or two onlookers were taken by surprise at the depth of acknowledgement in this admission. In and of itself, it was an historic moment, an amplification of the brass “stepping stone” memorial to Susanna and Anthony. Kate Hymes, Ulster County’s 2023 Poet Laureate and the vice president of the Margaret Wade-Lewis Center, performed a “libation,” and a Bishop offered a Christian prayer. May we all work together in peace and harmony for the greater good.
A man beside me mumbled, “It was all so long ago. What does it matter now?” and turned away. But most of the audience were moved and lined up to place cowrie shells on the stones, fitted with inscribed brass plates, in a silent gesture of goodwill.
The memorial was inspired by the Stolpersteine project, initiated by the German artist Gunter Denig in 1992 to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust — Jews, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, and others — denoting where they lived and worked. As of June 2023, 100,000[2] Stolpersteine have been laid in Germany. These stones are literally called “stumbling stones,” and are placed directly in the way of foot traffic as a reminder of the Nazi past and those who were murdered.
Anthony and Susanna’s memorial is not directly underfoot; it is off to the side. But the docents at Historic Huguenot Street will undoubtedly point them out on their tours as a significant gesture of reconciliation.
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