Radical Connecticut
Radical Connecticut: People’s History In The Constitution State, by Andy Piascik and Steve Thornton (Brooklyn, NY: Hard Ball Press, 2024)
Veteran activists Andy Piascik and Steve Thornton have presented a collection of their past articles to demonstrate that Connecticut, despite being known as “The Land of Steady Habits,” has a significant radical tradition. Radical Connecticut: People’s History in The Constitution State offers a vast array of dissenters and issues, that have perhaps been forgotten. As such it is a valuable antidote to the mythology that often clouds our understanding of the past.
As a “people’s” history, the book has an informal tone. It discusses people and events from the America Revolution to the present, including such subjects as the Revolution’s Culper Spy Ring, Major League Baseball’s Jimmy Piersall, rock and rollers and Ku Klux Klansmen. All are part of Connecticut history but defy simple classification because of their diversity. For example, in successive chapters there are stories on the radical labor unionists of the Industrial Workers of the World (the “Wobblies”), opposition in Hartford to the showing of the racist film The Birth of a Nation, and executions for witchcraft in the seventeenth century. Organized topically, they are not necessarily arranged chronologically, but are frequently entertaining.
The stories are preceded by informative introductions. For example, we read that Les Payne, an African American journalist, was born in Alabama, raised and educated in Connecticut, and received a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on illicit drug trading from Turkey to New York City. Another tells of a 1936 stage production of Sinclair Lewis’s novel, It Can’t Happen Here, with a cautionary note that the United States “today . . . faces ‘a resurgence in fascist ideology dressed as Americanism’.” So delightful are the introductions that they sometimes seem to beg to be expanded into lengthy accounts.
Nevertheless, the topics covered are varied and fascinating. Under the title, “Disparity in the Gilded Age,” Piascik and Thornton revisit the Hartford Wheel Club of 1893. In a year of economic depression and considerable hardship, wealthy bicyclists dressed like poor people had a festive celebration and raced in several states. Lest the reader forget that Connecticut has a legacy of antiwar protest, the authors remind us of a rally of 10,000 anti-Vietnam war protestors in Hartford’s Bushnell Park on April 26, 1969. That gathering led five months later to October 15, Moratorium Day, when “90,000 Connecticut residents” participated in demonstrations throughout the state.
This collection of ninety-three articles is indeed impressive, but one wonders if “radical” is a proper term to describe many of the individuals and events. A case in point is “Yanquis or Yankees?,” a two-page piece on relations between the United States and Cuba in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is interesting that gunmaker Samuel Colt’s weapons were in the hands of Theodore Roosevelt in the Battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War, that legislation proposed by Senator Orville H. Platt sanctioned United States intervention in that conflict following its conclusion, and that Hartford’s Mark Twain criticized such imperialism. In the same introduction we learn of various contacts between Connecticut residents and Cuba during the Marxist presidency of Fidel Castro. The case of Jimmy Piersall was very different, and apolitical. He waged an open, highly publicized battle for understanding of mental illness. A Waterbury resident and Boston Red Sox star outfielder, he was very much part of Connecticut, and his story is beautifully written, but, here, too, a connection to a radical tradition requires delineation.
As advertised this volume is indeed “people’s history,” and as such highlights fascinating individuals, many of whom happened to be radical. The articles are undated, which limits their value to “professional” histories, and the table of contents lacks page numbers, but these omissions contribute to its sense of a shared past, not monopolized by the few. For the concerned but casual reader troubled by the notion of Connecticut staidness, the book is a delightful eye-opener.
Reviewed by Robert D. Parmet, York College of the City University of New York