Whether to move ahead with charges against the president as Democrats tried to make the case that trump abuse the power of his office to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election legal scholars will lay out the Constitutional grounds for impeachment Margaret Taylor is a fellow at the Brookings Institution I think it will be a useful way for both members and the American public to be some reminded of what the Constitution says with a view toward taking the facts that have been gathered by the Intelligence Committee and others committee and applying those standards to those facts the White House has refused to take part saying at a letter quote a discussion with law professors does not begin to provide the president with any semblance of a fair process Winsor Johnston n.p.r. News Washington the House Intelligence Committee which is how its own hearings voted tonight along party lines to approve its report on the president a federal appeals court in New York is handing President Trump another defeat the court ruling Congress can demand trumps banking records for investigations into possible foreign influence in u.s. Politics or other misdeeds the panel of the 2nd u.s. Circuit of a court of appeals ruling 2 banks Georgia bank and Capital One should comply with subpoenas from the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees seeking the records of the court's will in Congress was acting within its constitutional authority from Spurstow lawyers as an appeal to the u.s. Supreme Court is under consideration stocks continue their downward slide today the Dow dropped $280.00 points the Nasdaq fell $47.00 points the s. And p. Was down 20 points this is n.p.r. . The state of Connecticut says it plans to divest from civilian gun manufacturers as Connecticut Public Radio's Vanessa de left her reports it's the latest move in a state that has an active stricter gun policies since the 2012 Newtown massacre state treasurer Shannon wooden says he lost his own cousin to gun violence just months before the mass shooting that killed 26 children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School so yes this issue is personal to me however as state treasurer gun violence is a matter of significant financial concern which warrants the attention of this office what images more than 36000000000 in pension investments he says recent court cases involving civilian gun manufacturers make them risky financially so he plans to reallocate 30000000 in pension funds to more stable investments the plan needs approval by an advisory board for n.p.r. News I'm Vanessa the law brought it in Hartford the federal government is launching a program provided daily h.i.v. Prevention drug for free to people who need it but lacking insurance coverage to pay for it it's part of the trumpet ministrations goal of ending the HIV epidemic in the u.s. By 2030 taking certain and i h i.v. Drugs dramatically reduces the chance of someone who still how they will become infected but Health and Human Services secretary Alex says are supposed to few people are getting the medication one reason is cost there are $38000.00 new infections in the u.s. Annually Colonel futures prices managed to eke out continued gains oil up $0.14 a barrel today to end the session at 5610 a barrel in New York I'm Jack Speer n.p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from the little market offering artisan made goods at home decor with the commitments of fair trade and non profit founded by women to empower female artists earns in marginalized communities around the world more at the Little Market dot com and the ne Casey Foundation. 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This is where we live from Connecticut Public Radio I'm loosing all potential the Connecticut River flows past many towns and cities in our state visitors to its banks in Middletown will now see a large plaque near the water the plaque in Middletown Harbor Park marks the city's history as a port and not only welcome ships that carried in slaves Africans but also was a necessary stop for the loading of local goods and provisions for colonial powers operating in the Caribbean an important hub in the transatlantic slave trade today where we live we learn why the city of Middletown is now recognizing its contributions to slavery coming up we'll also hear how some Middletown residents have been working to raise awareness about a prominent African-American family do you know the story of the Demons We'll tell you about them that's later 1st I want to welcome to the show my guests in studio Debbie Shapiro who is the municipal historian of Middletown Connecticut Debbie welcome to the show Oh thank you very much for having me also with me is Demetrius you Dell professor of u.s. History and dean of the social sciences at Weston University also in Middletown Connecticut Dimitrius welcome to where we live thank you so much for having me I want to start with Debbie I understand you've lived in mill town for a number of years that tell me about did you move to the city or are you born and raised in Middletown I've lived in Middletown about 45 years now I grew up in the Midwest on a farm in Ohio and I went to law school down in Virginia and William and Mary and who did I meet that d.n. Shapiro from Town Connecticut and. We were just fighting to get married he said that he wanted to go back to Middletown and practice law there and since I didn't really want to go back to the farm I thought this is great and. I I really think of Middletown as my home town because. Having married somebody local I was able to meet so many people and really feel a part of the community right away when you moved to Middletown Were you aware of the city's history as an important port. Not at all not at all when I think about ports I think about traditional cargo but not often on the people's minds or the idea that in slave Africans were on some of the ships that came to Middletown Connecticut was that a surprise to you when you 1st learned that it certainly was well I'm almost 70 years old so I'm of a generation that in high school was taught that slavery was in the South that was said in the north the north the nurse were the good guys and I had ancestors who fought on the side of the north of the Civil War And so when I 1st learned all about slavery and away England I was just floored it was just astonishing to me to find all this out I mentioned this plaque that now sits by the Connecticut River in Middletown I wanted you to to read an excerpt of that text that's found on the Platte Oh well. The beginning of the plaque has language general language about the slave trade but then the last part of it is very specific to battle town and it reads in 1738 the ship Martha and Jane own by Abraham Redwood arrived at Bethel town's river front having sailed from Africa and 126 and slave Africans disembarked during the voyage 23 of their fellow captives perished and 761 the Speedwell captain by Middletown native Timothy Miller also arrived Carey gets human cargo from Africa on that voyage $21.00 slave Africans perished during the. Middle Passage with 74 surviving the names of the men women and children who made these treacherous voyages are lost to history this marker is a rector to remember the lives of these and the thousands of other enslaved people who contributed to the building of our community erected by the citizens of the city of Middletown 2090 a study Shapiro misapply historian of Middletown Connecticut as I mentioned Demetrius you Delos with me Professor of u.s. History at Westlake university I might be surprising for some of our listeners to hear that there were these 2 ships that came to Middletown Connecticut in the 1700s take us back to that time when the ships carrying enslaved Africans stopped there tell us about the transatlantic slave trade and why Middletown Connecticut so the 2 ships that she mentioned came in the 18th century and by the time we get to those ships there's been already a quite a bit of history 18 centuries going to be the peak of the transatlantic slave trade and it was dominated that point by Britain but there's a long history to that and this issue begins in the 15th century 1st the Portuguese who want to rock a boat or door and land on the shores of what Senegal and that is what's going to shape this process it begins with about $250.00 slaves who go to live on Iberian Peninsula and then in the wake of the voyages of Columbus in 49 to 2 that's going to be our call as early as 1501 accord to call in Palma for by new custom upon though they have governments ban you know to bring slaves and by 1518 you're going to be able to bring the slaves directly to. The Americas that's why it's called the middle passage just before they had to go through to spending all their financing before so as Moses Finley who's a historian of antiquity says many societies knew some form of in servitude of servitude indentured labor course labor slavery. But something distinctive happened in the Americas because there it becomes racialize and relegated to one population group and it was a massive project if you think about the numbers of slaves that go for me into Brazil after me into the United States. Wanted to mean to the Spanish carry been another term into British Caribbean So this really was the beginning of a world economic system I mentioned why Middletown Connecticut is so can you talk a little bit about the location of Connecticut This was considered the Middle Passage so. Anyone with a very important because this is where you are actually going to have slavery is going to be pointed out as well if it was linked to the slavery in the south and even in 17th century you had to question after a 1638 b. Kwok war and 6 and 76 King Philip's war and slave indigenous peoples and also of Africans so Middletown was part of this whole complex in New England of world trade if you for me with the book complicity to talk about the weather fields girls on the island they produce food that was shipped to the West Indies also the card that the rejected card Massachusetts went to the Caribbean for slave for food for the slaves so Middletown was a part of this world economic system that the bishop arrows Also with us here in studio as we talk about the middle town's history again an important port in New England and it contributed to the transatlantic slave trade Debbie tell us about the founding of Middletown Connecticut and how it is tied its founding its wealth to what was going on in that period of time well Middletown was founded in 1650 and the 1st settlers were farming but they quickly discovered that Middletown had deep water. The Connecticut River down in Old Saybrook had. A big sand bar and still does and so there was enough room for ocean going vessels to go by but there was no anchorage anchorage in Old Saybrook whereas there was Anchorage up in metal town so that's how Middletown was able to develop as a support and. They settlers recognized right away how important that was and the checker barons down in the islands they were keeping all of their acreage in sugarcane because it was so lucrative so because of that they had to import all the food that they fed to themselves and their enslaved workers so that's where New England is coming in with all this food that's being shipped down the ship's manifest that are in the archives of the Historical Society show the onions going down potatoes meet. Horses oxen a lot of horses were needed to run these plantations in fact it's been estimated that tens of thousands of horses were shipped to these plantations and 75 percent of them came from came from Connecticut so these horses are tied on the on the tops of the ships and so they would go down with all this produce and then they would come back north with sugar molasses and unfortunately at slave people as well Debbie tell us about the 2 ships again that are mentioned on this particular plaque now along the waterfront again in Middletown what do we know about the enslaved Africans that were on those 2 ships Well that is the thing we don't something about Timothy Miller shows up in the archives and he's a well known sea captain and Abraham Redwood actually was. An owner out of Rhode Island and he gave a lot of money to open a. Big library and Providence so a lot is known about Abraham redwood but. Almost nothing is known about these and slave people. There are ads in the newspapers that show. Different merchants on Main Street are advertising that they have. Enslaved woman newly arrived from Africa so. That's all we know about them we know about specific and slave people from from church records from some family records like memoirs said that are at the historical society but but very little is known about the people who it was in on these 2 ships 200 people came came to Middletown. Demetrius I want you to maybe expound on that a little bit this idea that you know archives are important when we are able to look at ship manifests ads in the newspaper at the time but the fact that there's not a lot known about the enslaved that were brought here that also speaks and makes a point yes there's quite a bit of work done now in terms of what's called Silence and of archives and I want to push that too much but it does tells us something about who was considered to be important enough to have records kept for them so we have to begin to think differently about history to how do we tell stories and this is where you know you know it's where questions of fiction comes and like 20 Morrison's work as a kind of this telling us to sort of reimagine what was like to live under slavery and we have to also become comfortable with living with the fact that we don't know some things and that's Ok to write it shows the history does have these gaps and you know it was recorded by certain people at a certain time from a particular perspective and these people were not valued as much and so therefore their lives and their stories were not was at the time that you know where were the . I've been told I think it might also serve as a cautionary tale for us to think about perhaps home only needing out when we write our histories today so that we don't at least try to fall into the same traps Demetrius you Dale is a professor of u.s. History and also dean of the social sciences at Western University he's here in studio with me as well as to be Shapiro municipal historian of Middletown as we look at efforts in recent weeks and months where the city of Middletown is acknowledging its connections its how it contributed to the transatlantic slave trade if you're a resident of Middletown we want to hear from you find us on Facebook and Twitter where we live before we head into break I was wondering if Demetrius you could talk a little bit about you know our ideas especially in the north of what slavery is or was when we hear Debbie ship hero mention in these advertisements the fact that some of these and slave Africans came off the ships and also did jobs in Connecticut and throughout New England what kind of jobs were they doing. Well you know and because you didn't have the sort of plantation agriculture system in the north they would do things like dig wells women off service nurse is certainly a lot of domestic work and if you think about say make it mid Atlantic region New York they built you know the churches taverns the buildings along the battery in New York were built by slaves Wall Street from which you took this name was also built by slaves so you know it was a form of skilled labor actually right it wasn't just a cultural labor it was you could say in the mid Atlantic semi-urban here also I don't cultural and domestic but also require technical skills craftsmanship for example labels performed by slaves there's also this narrative that people who were enslaved there probably treated better in the north what do we know about that narrative and what was really true actually the truth. Well I don't know how much we know because that would be very individualized and the question of slavery is less a question of treatment and one more for political subjectivity so for your purposes marriage is very good on this because when he's learning to read he gives a bread to what he calls the street urchins or what he called the Bread of Life which meant that relatively speaking these poor white kids made out of as much food as he has a slave but they also had something that he didn't half which was a sense of mobility and what you call for lack of a better or a trade off so for me the question of slavery doesn't hang on the level of brutality but on this idea that you're forced to not have a certain kind of freedom and then this is also intergenerational because it's transferred to your children as well and so that to me is the defining element of slavery so you might be relatively better treated on certain plantations but there are making them more human based on the conception of faith system. Shapiro when we think about those that were enslaved here in Connecticut the skilled labor that they did do you know particular anecdote stories about some of them oh yes you read my mind because it was thinking about this the largest slave holder in Middletown was a gentleman named Philip Mortimer and he owned the largest of the broke walks a rope walk is a is the building where they would wave the hemp into the rope that the ships needed and there are several stories about his and slaved people one of them is documented and. In the in those days whenever somebody needed something that they couldn't afford and somebody else provided it they would send a bill to the town of Middletown So in the archives that the historical society there are like a box of these colonial bills to the town of Middleton. And one of them is Philip Mortimer billing the town for the services of his aids slaves building a bridge for the city so so they were building the infrastructure of the city which is one aspect of what we were saying on the plaque that that they helped build our city and another anecdote about one of his and slave people is that in His will He was freeing all of them but one of the heirs contested the will and the gentleman wasn't free and it was accused of poisoning this air and. He was found guilty even though the gentleman didn't didn't die but he was put in old Newgate prison and then later when the weather's field prison was built he was transferred there and they were letting him out his name was Prince Mortimer he was the son of a king back in Africa and. He got to the outside world but he had spent his entire life either being a slave or a prisoner so he asked to go back in and they they let him back in and he died in Weathersfield prison at the age of 110 so there's a whole book written about Prince Mortimer I can't wait to read that I guess today Debbie Shapiro municipal historian of Middletown and Demetrius Del professor of u.s. History and dean of the social sciences at Wesley and university Coming up we talk more about Middletown efforts to acknowledge its history and do you live in Middletown you can join us to find us on Facebook and Twitter where we live. Connecticut public is nonprofit and funded by listeners like you thank you for your support. On the next fresh air b.j. Miller a hospice and palliative care doctor who started doing this work because he came close to death when he was in college and jumped on top of a park commuter train and got electro