For Immediate Release: April 20, 2019
Contact: Susan Strano, Marketing Director
sstrano@benningtonmuseum.org
802-447-1571 ext. 204
Image: Cover of Issue 23 of the Walloomsack Review
Spring Walloomsack Review Now Available
BENNINGTON, VT, – Bennington Museum is publishing two issues of the Walloomsack Review this season. On the cover of Volume 23 is an image of the “Black youth” who led captured Hessians after the Battle of Bennington. This image sets the stage for the articles in this issue which include topics pertaining to the history of African-Americans in Vermont and how Vermonters engaged with the civil rights movement. The second publication is a special edition that contains articles written by current students at Bennington College. Both address interesting and timely topics and make for very interesting reading.
In his article, Phil Holland analyzes the work of several historians who wrote about the legendary “Black youth” portrayed in the twelve-foot panorama titled Prisoners Taken at the Battle of Bennington, which is on permanent display in the Museum’s Battle Gallery. Not only is the smiling youth featured on the cover of the semi-annual journal, but his role in history is examined in an article by Holland, who relates various ways the youth has been described in history. He goes on to conclude that he was a servant of the family of Moses Robinson, early settler and important founder of Vermont.
Volume 23 also presents a follow-up to the 1935 Ku Klux Klan murder of Bennington socialist Joseph Shoemaker in Tampa, Florida written by author Jen Shakshober, in addition to an article by Ruth Bert Ekstrom and Avis Hayden interpreting three letters written back home by Benningtonian Newton Gould who had moved to Kentucky during the Civil War. Editor Tyler Resch offers a history of the 1965 “Vermont in Mississippi,” a project that sent a Montpelier school teacher to Jackson, Mississippi, as a community organizer during the era of the civil rights movement.
In this issue Museum Curator Jamie Franklin reviews a new book of photographs by Peter Miller titled Vanishing Vermonters. and Phil Holland reviews Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom: Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys and the American Revolution, written by Christopher S. Wren. Wrapping up the reviews, is one written by Tyler Resch, who discovers a nearly lost biography of Samuel Williams. In 1794, Williams wrote the first history of Vermont and also launched the Rutland Herald newspaper.
The special cooperative college-authored issue, coming out later this spring, stems from Bennington College faculty anthropologist Mirka Prazak who asked her students to focus on the town in which they find themselves – Bennington. They responded with a fascinating variety of observations — sociological, governmental, economic, agricultural, demographic, environmental, philanthropic, and political.
This Walloomsack Review is underwritten by Robert and Cora May Howe and is available at the Bennington Bookstore, Bennington Pottery, Northshire Bookstore, and Battenkill Books, as well as the Museum Store for $4.95 per issue. You can also purchase it online at store.benningtonmuseum.org or sign-up for an annual subscription of two issues ($12.95) and eliminate the shipping fee that accompanies online orders.
About the Museum
Bennington Museum is located at 75 Main Street (Route 9), Bennington, in The Shires of Vermont. The museum is open Thursday through Tuesday, 10 am to 5 pm. and is wheelchair accessible. Regular admission is $10 for adults, $9 for seniors and students over 18. Admission is never charged for younger students, museum members, or to visit the Museum Store. Visit the Museum’s website www.benningtonmuseum.org or call 802-447-1571 for more information.