Author: vtpfd

PRESS RELEASE • For Immediate Release 

Contact: Curtiss Reed, Jr. • creed@vtpfd.org • (802) 380-1795

Brattleboro, VT, 22 June 2024:

New audio recordings created by multimedia artist Shanta Lee will enhance the visitor experience at selected sites on the Vermont African American Heritage Trail. These recordings resulted from a collaboration between the Brattleboro Words Trail and the Vermont African American Heritage Trail, will be shared on both sites, and can be viewed all together at: https://brattleboro.stqry.app/1/list/26097.

The recordings invite visitors to explore: the back stories of the Turner Family at Journey’s End in Grafton; the 54^th Regiment sculpture of Black Civil War Soldiers in Rutland; Abijah and Lucy Terry Prince in Guilford; Black Civil War veterans buried in Woodstock; the Pullman Porters at Hildene, the Lincoln Family Home in Manchester; the archives of Daisy Turner at the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury; Alexander Twilight at the Old Stone House Museum in Brownington; and freedom seekers at the Rokeby Museum in Ferrisburgh.

The overall project design for these audio segments including research, writing and narration of each audio segment was led by Shanta Lee in collaboration with Vermont African American Heritage Trail Director Curtiss Reed Jr., Reggie Martell who provided sound editing and Damon Honeycutt who did the sound design and original composition for each of the sites. Lee also visited and worked closely with leaders at each of the sites to ensure the accuracy of the information provided.

Lee, also an original Advisor to the Brattleboro Words Trail, says she is excited about how the audio will encourage people to delve more deeply into Vermont’s rich Black history. “Both residents and visitors to Vermont will now have an opportunity to get a deeper understanding of the Black history of these sites through these pieces. I hope that eventually each site on the African American Heritage Trail will be accompanied by an audio companion piece similar to these.”

These audio vignettes were produced thanks to funding from a 2022 Vermont Arts Council Digital Capacities grant made to the Brattleboro Words Trail. Lee’s VT African American Heritage Trail audio and more than 120 distinct, community-produced Brattleboro Words Trail recordings will be part of a permanent exhibit at the new Brattleboro Amtrak station scheduled to open next year. The Vermont African American Heritage Trail has additional support from Vermont NEA and the Harpoon and Long Trail breweries.

Welcome, Visitor, to the new Vermont African American Heritage Trail Website!

Although the VTAAHT website opened in 2015, in June 2024, while in the process of adding links to new audio content relating to the Trail from the Brattleboro Words project , we discovered that the old website was completely non-functional, and unfortunately after several rounds of attempting to use the repair tools available from our hosting provider, we were unable to recover the old website.

Fortunately, we had begun the project of a complete redesign of the website several years ago, but the project had been placed on the back burner. This meant we had about 75% of what we needed to immediately transition operations to the new website, so we are pressing forward.

Unfortunately, this means that there’s still a lot of content about individual site on the Trail that needs to be added, and we are hard at work doing just that.

What is completed so far:

• Building a Google Maps of all the Sites and Historic Markers on the Trail
• Location information for all Historic Markers on their respective pages
• Addition of links to all the new audio content from the Brattleboro Words project
• Downloadable PDF files of the latest version of the VTAAHT printed brochure, which can also be found at Vermont Welcome Centers, and the Vermont Black History Bibilography.
• The Site page for Hildene, The Lincoln Family Home

What needs to be completed ASAP:

• The Site pages for all the other Sites on the Trail
• Adding Google Maps to all the Historic Site Marker pages
• Adding educational program information to the Education page
• Fleshing out the GeoTour page
• Adding Site pages for the additional Sites in New York State
• Adding general information to the top Sites and Historic Site Markers pages

We thank you for your visit and your patience while we get the new site fully functional, and we hope you will return soon to plan a visit or a vacation to Vermont to learn more about the history of Black Americans in Vermont.