Wesleyan Joins Middletown To Recognize Amistad Journey to Freedom Day

Wesleyan University faculty and students played an important role at Middletown’s 2022 Amistad Journey to Freedom Community Day Celebration in Harbor Park Saturday, October 8. Event planners coordinated with Discovering Amistad to offer age-appropriate tours of the replica vessel, which arrived in Middletown one week earlier.

Jesse Nasta ’07, assistant professor of the practice in African American Studies, who wrote his honors thesis on Middletown’s Beman Triangle, was already signed up to participate, leading the 4th Annual Middletown Middle Passage Ceremony. “The Middle Passage and the Middle Passage Ceremony are an origin story of the Beman Triangle and other free African American communities in New England. Those who survived the Middle Passage and New England slavery in the 1600s and 1700s, and their descendants, went on to create free, activist communities and churches, like the Beman Triangle and the Cross Street AME Zion Church, shortly after gaining freedom in the very early 1800s,” he said.

In addition to the speakers and arts and crafts, performers were needed. That’s when Rani Arbo, Campus and Community Engagement Manager, Wesleyan Center for the Arts, stepped in to help.

Within a few days, Wesleyan artists and performers answered the call. Iddi Saaka, assistant professor of Dance, was the first to join the roster. Next came The Lost Tribe band led by Wesleyan Ph.D. candidate Jocelyn Pleasant. Finally, Assistant Professor of the Practice in Dance Joya Powell’s Afro-Brazilian dance students Lauren Muchowski ’25, Crystal Peña ’24, Hannah Phan ’25, Laurence Fine ’25, and Rebeca Trevino ’24 signed up to perform.

“As soon as we heard about this special Community Day, we had to be a part of what this stood for,” Fine said.