09-02-2025
Mystic celebrates Black History Month
Mystic — More than 50 people at the Union Baptist Church on Saturday stepped out of their comfort zone and greeted, talked and laughed with people they did not know.
Kevin Booker Jr., the founder of Booker Empowerment LLC, encouraged people at a Black History Month program to talk to two people they did not know for a minute. He said titles should go out the door because at the end of the day, humans are genetically 99.9% the same.
The Black History Month celebration, held by the Greater Mystic Chamber of Commerce with the Mystic & Noank Library and Booker Empowerment LLC., featured poetry, speeches, and music, and a youth panel.
Black History is everyone's history," Booker told the audience.
The crowd first gathered at Liberty Pole Square where Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas spoke, and State Troubadour Nekita Waller sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing," also known as the Black National Anthem. They then marched up West Main Street, where there is a Black History Month banner, to Union Baptist Church.
This is the fourth annual event, and Bruce Flax, president of the Greater Mystic Chamber of Commerce, said "we wanted everyone to know that they're welcome in Mystic."
Booker said everyone is struggling and dealing with different trials and tribulations, things they're seeing, and a nation that's shifting. But he said one thing they are at the event to do is to celebrate the contributions that so many have made and make sure their voices thrive and continue to inspire future generations.
Aster Haughton, 18, graduated from Ledyard High School last year, where she was a member of the More Than Words club, whose mission is "to promote respect for diversity, facilitate communication, and build trust among members of our community." She moderated the student panel and shared her poetry at the event.
She said during the march that it's important to celebrate Black History because "if you don't learn about your history, there's the chance that you'll repeat mistakes so that things will get worse than they were before, when we should always be striving to improve."
"It's just important that we celebrate because it's good to be proud of where you come from and who you are, so that even when you feel lost you can remember that there was a history that you should be proud of," she added. "And if you can't find yourself in the future, you can look back and be proud."
Her sister, Forest Haughton, 14, of New London High School, said "it's important to celebrate Black History because I feel like what's the point of only learning half the history when there's so much more you can learn?"
One of the speakers at the event, Shamare Holmes, representing the Connecticut Sun as manager of community relations, said that if people are ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work, to please connect and "let's really start pushing forward this dream that Martin spoke on so long ago."
Marvin Espy, an artist with a gallery in New London, spoke during the program about how he always loved channeling his imagination into art and painting for wonder, and he was the kid who could draw anything. While most of the Black art he saw was protest art, he didn't want to be confined to that.
But he reflected on how by May 2020, there had been a number of instances of police brutality that led to the death of Black and brown people. He said after the public execution of George Floyd, he did not want to give himself and his gift to that image.
"I'm tired of painting dead Black men and women, he said. He ended up painting 6 large depictions of the crime scene.
He said now four-and-a-half years later, he again feels confronted with painting what he doesn't want to, after learning a white supremacist group set up camp on a highway overpass near Lincoln Heights, Ohio, the mostly Black community his grandfather helped establish.
Espy said he hopes he has the courage and compassion to use the gift that was given to him to make a difference. While his talent is art, he said other people's may be their position, their music or business acumen.
But he said if people only use that for their own advancement, it's only a matter of time before what happens to the man down the street or the family down the street comes to their own front door.
He reflected on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
