Speakers Bureau
The Windham-Willimantic NAACP Speakers Bureau
The NAACP Speakers Bureau is a group of dedicated volunteers with diverse backgrounds and careers committed to serving our schools and community gatherings throughout Windham County. They are ready to publicly tell their stories.
Not even a pandemic can alter the NAACP’s commitment to delivering speakers of diverse backgrounds to engage in conversations with children, youth, and adults. The pool of speakers includes volunteers from across Connecticut with the aim to create experiences that spark engagement, enable change, and enrich lives of children and youth.
Meet One of Our Speakers!
Pat Wilson Pheanious is the living descendant, the sixth-great-granddaughter of Montros and Phillis, Africans brought from Barbados to Connecticut in 1710. They were victims of slavery. The Witness Stones Project helped Wilson Pheanious find her ancestry and placed a marker memorializing Phillis. She is a committed to restoring truth in American history, specifically Black American history, through the pursuit of this project.
Wilson Pheanious was the Connecticut State Representative for the 53rd House District from 2018 to 2020. She is a lawyer who has a master’s degree in social work. She also served as former commissioner of the state Department of Social Services.
Wilson Pheanious said the students’ research into slavery helps correct the lack of respect African Americans have suffered. “When one talks about the phrase Black Lives Matter … Of course they’ve always mattered but they’ve never been acknowledged,” which, she said, is a source of “the racial animus that goes on to this day.”
Credit: Edward Stannard :: New Haven Register
“My line has been here from before the Revolution. … I am indelibly part of this country,” Wilson Pheanious said. “There are so many painful reminders of what slavery was and did that, when there [are] triumphs,” they should be held up. “I didn’t come from nowhere. That certainly didn’t come from me. It came from nine generations of ancestors.”
Click on poster to download PDF copy.
If you are interested in this program please complete our contact form to book the performance, classroom workshop, preparation, and follow-up materials. The classroom workshop will be presented by NAACP education committee members.