AMENIA — The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) last Saturday, March 30, did what it has always done well. Its Florida branch organized a protest. Marchers urged an arrest in the February killing of a 17-year-old by a neighborhood watch volunteer.That the NAACP, in its 103rd year, remains at the fore of the continuing struggle for equality and social justice in this country is no surprise. What may be a surprise to some is the role played by an Amenia resident, Joel Spingarn, who organized a critical conference attended by vibrant leaders and rising stars of the civil rights movement in 1933.Eben Miller, who teaches at Southern Maine Community College, has written a valuable and long-needed book that examines not only the conference itself, but singles out five of its participants for a closer look.The idea for “Born Along the Color Line” (Oxford University Press, 356 pages, $29.95), Miller said in an email, came from a photograph “of the conferees assembled in Amenia in August 1933. I was struck by this image. Here was a group of young African-American professionals and academics gathered during the depth of the Great Depression to discuss how best to pursue black equality.”Fluidity, change at TroutbeckThe gathering was at Spingarn’s Troutbeck estate.“I immediately had innumerable questions,” Miller went on. “I wanted to know all I could about who each of the figures were. I wanted to know what they discussed and debated. I wanted to know how and why they were chosen to represent their generation of young black leaders. I wanted to know why they met in Amenia. (After having visited Troutbeck during my research, I have a much better understanding of this.) Above all, I wanted to know how this event impacted the civil rights struggle.”Amenia wasn’t exactly unknown to the writer. His father, Garry Miller, grew up in Millerton and his grandfather, John C. Miller, still lives there.That the gathering was held at Troutbeck was due, certainly, to Spingarn’s participation. Additionally, W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the NAACP’s founders, long gravitated to conference locations near water. The first Niagara Conference in 1905 was held at Fort Erie Beach, Ontario, on Lake Erie but in Canada, for example, and the second was in Harper’s Ferry, W.Va., at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers.Du Bois saw water as a cleansing source, a source of fluidity, of change.The pond at Troutbeck, an old iron ore bed, fit the mold. Participants swam or boated there.The 30-some guests slept in seven large canvas tents installed on the lawn. Men and women came to the conference. Meals and informal gatherings were in the big house. Attendees came mostly by train. Du Bois drove, and brought two others with him.“Amid the gardens,” Miller writes, “stood the Spingarn home, a 28-room, slate-roofed, gray stone mansion. Through its heavy casement windows, opened invitingly onto the grounds, were exposed-beam ceilings and a library befitting the former Columbia University professor of comparative literature turned gentleman gardener [Spingarn]. Lining the shelves were volumes from the Italian Renaissance, works of the American transcendentalists, local histories tracing the origins of Troutbeck to the 1760s, botanical treatises and Joel Spingarn’s own published poetry.”‘Comes the revolution’Here assembled a handpicked group from what was considered the “Talented Ten,” the smartest, most determined, hardest working of the black race.The main agenda item was the relevancy, in those Great Depression years, of the NAACP’s original mission. As discussion ensued, it became clear a new generation — among them youth activist Juanita Jackson, diplomat Ralph Bunche, economics specialist Abram Harris, attorney Louis Redding and Harlem grass roots organizer Moran Weston — were hugely concerned with economic and hardship issues.Ever provocative, Du Bois, who in his book “The Souls of Black Folk” had decried the color line as prohibiting Negroes from the same opportunities as whites, now suggested segregation as a tool; blacks, for example, should patronize only black banks, or black merchants. The idea was not a popular one.President Franklin D. Roosevelt was hard at work launching his New Deal initiatives, which some considered socialistic. Marxism waved its ugly head, but held only modest attraction for wary African-Americans.Though one delegate, Miller relates, entered the Spingarn villa, stood in the library and blurted, “‘Comes the revolution, man.”As Miller notes, the remark made Du Bois and others wince, but brought out the irony that the civil rights movement had long relied “upon the largess of ennobled white benefactors, such as the Spingarns.” (Joel’s brother, Arthur, provided legal expertise to the NAACP.)A collective effortIt was a critical year for the NAACP. Du Bois, whose Crisis magazine was a major expense to publish, was increasingly at odds with the new executive director, Walter White. Within months of the conference, Du Bois resigned and returned to Atlanta University and Spingarn cut off his tenure as board chairman.The NAACP moved into new hands, embraced new ideas. Among the published findings, note was made that “the exploitation of black workers had become the most debilitating. The urge was to merge efforts with the white labor movement. “The key,” Miller said, “was to convince existing betterment organizations that ‘the welfare of white and black labor are one and inseparable.’”Miller in explaining this zeroes in on several participants.“I ended up writing mainly about five of the Amenia delegates,” the author said. “I chose to write a collective biography because I thought the form could best convey the collective effort involved in the civil rights struggle. “Writing about these five figures also allowed me to explore how the movement changed over the course of the early 20th century (including the development of an economic agenda), as well as to examine the crucial role local communities … played in the movement.“Significantly, the focus on the 1933 Amenia Conference also gave me the opportunity to emphasize the importance of the NAACP during this early era of the civil rights movement. In this way, the book is an institutional history, as well as a collective biography, and testifies to the critical involvement of civil rights organizations in the long movement for African American freedom.”Troutbeck notes on its website, “It was Spingarn who originally spoke the rallying words of a later charismatic African-American leader, ‘I have a dream … of a unified Negro population.’ ”
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One systemic consequence of slavery is the loss and obscuring of the histories of those who were enslaved. Records were often not kept about where Africans had been stolen from or who they were related to. Families were torn apart, leaving nothing but the faintest traces of the past. The delineation point, where genealogists can no longer trace histories back, is refered to this as the “document wall.”
Today, 250 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence and more than 160 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, there is a growing effort to restore some of the history stripped from enslaved people and their descendants. Among the leaders of these efforts is Mills, president of the Alex Breanne Corporation, a nonprofit organization that works to identify previously anonymous Black Americans from history and connect them with their living relatives.
The work began with Mills’ sister, who started digging into their family’s past in the 1990’s and introduced him to this emerging world of genealogy. Through that process, the Mills family discovered their great-great-grandfather, Ned Mills, who had been enslaved in Texas. His last name came from his final enslaver and remains the family surname. Through their research, they found that the document wall directly affected their ancestor, who learned of his liberation on June 19, 1865, now commemorated as Juneteenth.
“For the first time,” Mills writes on his website, “American slavery wasn’t something that had happened to anonymous people in a history book. It had happened to my family.”
The discovery gave Mills a familial pride he had been missing for years. That pride fueled his desire to help others find their own history. In 2023, Mills received his certificate in genealogical research from Boston University. He has used his expertise to help descendants of enslaved people uncover histories they never dreamed of learning.
To do this, he uses a process called “reverse genealogy,” identifying a person from the past and working forward to discover their descendants. Along the way, Mills has found some remarkable people who fought for freedom on American soil, some of whom were never freed.
Pay Bill for Robin Starr’s service in the Continental Army.Courtesy the Alex Breanne Corporation
At the Cornwall Historical Society event, Mills will present the stories of four Connecticut families: Job Lathrop of Norwich, the son of Pirmus Armes, about whom Mills has published a book; Prince Mortimer of Middletown, also the subject of a book by Mills;, the three sons of London Wallace of Simsbury; and Robert “Robin” Starr of Danbury, who later lived in Cornwall and Sharon.
A few years ago, Cornwall Consolidated School social studies teacher Will Vincent reached out to Mills for research guidance on a local history project his students were undertaking. Together, they learned about Naomi Freeman of Cornwall. After purchasing an acre of land on Great Hollow Road in 1828, Naomi Freeman became the first Black female landowner in Cornwall.
The students petitioned the town to rename a road after the historic Cornwall resident In April 2025, Great Hollow Road was officially renamed Naomi Freeman Historic Road. U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes joined Mills and the Cornwall Consildated School students for a presentation of their research.
Since then, Mills has guided the students in their quest to learn more about Starr’s story. Starr was a Revolutionary War soldier who joined the Continental Army to earn enough money to buy his own freedom, receiving the Badge of Merit in the process. The stories of his descendents’ services are equally worthy of their own books.
In recognition of Mills and the students’ work, First Selectman Gordon Ridgway proclaimed Feb. 8 as Robin Starr Day.
Preregistration is required for the event at the Cornwall Historical Society. To learn more about Mills’ work, visit
alexbreanne.org.
John Mills speaking at Quinnipiac University.Courtesy the Alex Breanne Corporation
Stephanie Saetta runs Charlie Chicken Bones, a sanctuary in Salisbury.
Dogs have been at the center of Saetta’s life since childhood. She remembers going to the library to research different breeds and trying to convince her parents the family needed a dog. She had her heart set on an Irish Wolfhound, but she was more than happy when her mom brought home a West Highland terrier.
After college, she adopted Charlie as a puppy from a rescue on Long Island. He was a hound-shepherd-Rottweiler mix who suffered from intense seizures. Some veterinarians recommended euthanasia, but Saetta wasn’t ready to give up on him.
When Charlie would have an episode, she would sit with him, nose to nose, talking him through it. She learned to look for the moment he began to come around — when he could smell her again and his tail started to wag.
“You only get one or two of these soul connection dogs, so I do this in his honor,” Saetta said. “I like to think that all the dogs that come through are going to have that person that they connect with just the same.”
Through a network of women working to rescue animals in Texas, she learned about the desperate situations facing many dogs.
With limited space, some public pounds euthanize even healthy animals to make room. Limited access to veterinary care leaves sick dogs or unvaccinated puppies especially vulnerable.
Saetta saw that reality firsthand with a puppy named Gus, a Labrador mix she fostered who has since been adopted. Gus and his sisters had been dumped beside a road, where they were living under an abandoned car. People would leave food for them, but no one would take them to the pound.
“Even the people who rescue animals down there were like, ‘sadly, the best place for them to be is on the side of the road,’” she said. “That’s safer. Someone might actually help them that way.”
Saetta knows that there are far more dogs than any one person can save, but she also knows that helping one dog means one fewer on the street.
Stephanie Saetta,with her rescue dog George and Blue (left), a shepherd mix awaiting his forever home.Madi Long
Charlie Chicken Bone Sanctuary operates entirely through foster homes, a model that Saetta believes is best for the dogs and the humans hoping to adopt them.
Rather than moving directly from a difficult environment into a permanent home, the dogs have a chance to settle into a quieter setting. They can learn what it’s like to live with a family, sleep somewhere comfortable and receive affection without fighting for attention. Fostering also allows the rescue to really get to know each dog.
“As fosters, we’re honest,” said Saetta. We’ll tell you everything that’s been bad, everything that’s been good. What their temperament is and how they’ve responded to all the things they’ve experienced.”
A successful adoption is not just about finding a dog a home; it’s about finding the right home where the dog and family can thrive together.
Saetta is looking for more people willing to open their homes to foster dogs. She understands that the thought of growing attached and eventually saying goodbye can feel daunting. But she sees that goodbye a little differently.
Fostering means being part of a dog’s journey, even if only for a short time. It gives dogs a safe place to rest, the chance to trust again and the love they have gone without for much of their lives. And when the time comes for them to leave, it is not really a loss. It is the reward of knowing they are moving on to a forever home.
Blue, Saetta’s current foster, is hoping to find his perfect home.
Blue, a 7 year-old Shepard mix, is waiting for his forever home. Madi Long
Now around 7 years old, Blue spent most of his life wandering the streets of Texas. People sometimes left food out for him, but his mangy, dirty coat kept them from stopping to pet him. Today, he has a chance to experience something different.
Blue is still waiting for his forever home. Saetta believes he would do best as the only dog in a household or alongside another senior dog. He will need someone willing to continue working with him on his training and understand that a dog with his history needs patience.
But what he gives in return is a whole lot of love.
“He’s so enthusiastic, he’s so excited for life, he’s so friendly, and he’s got such a good heart, and he loves to cuddle,” Saetta said. “He’s a good, good, good dog.”
For more information on adopting Blue or how to foster, visit ccbsanctuary.org.
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