Lifting up local Black voices
Bloomfield panelists share experiences to build relationships
Their voices are intended to share the experiences of African Americans residents in Bloomfield, along with success and challenges related to race.
Four Black residents recently participated in a “Voices of Bloomfield” discussion held by the town’s Humanities Committee. The event aimed to uplift the Black community in town, as the committee’s mission is to celebrate the town’s “rich diversity and encourage positive relationships, all while fostering civic engagement.”
Humanities Committee Chair Meredith Johnson welcomed all and moderator Loraine DeBeatham introduced the panelists: Sandra C. Brown, Cindi Lloyd, Jesse White III, and the Rev. Jessie S. White.
DeBeatham focused on three topics in her conversation with panelists — their experiences living in the town as Black residents, obstacles faced within the town, and how the town can learn from their experiences collectively.
Before panelists shared their stories, they shared a brief biography of who they are and their relationship to the town.
Brown works remotely from her home for a health care organization, which is located in Cincinnati. She has also worked for other health care organizations throughout Connecticut and in Massachusetts.
She said her family moved to Bloomfield when she was 2 and she considers herself “a cheerleader and community person” for the town. She grew up attending Bloomfield Public Schools, went to law school, married and had children.
As an adult, Brown has moved away and come back at various times in her life, and has been back for 25 years. She said that it was important for her children to feel the sense of community that she felt growing up in the town. “I treasured that we have that in
Sandra C. Brown:
common and that we have all benefited…,” she said.
Jesse White III: White is the principal at Bloomfield High School and has been an educator in Bloomfield Public Schools for 21 years. He said that the town has had a special place in his heart, because his grandparents lived in Bloomfield.
Although White grew up in Hartford until he went to college, he said he remembers car trips to the town as a kid, where he would believe it was another state – due to how different it was in comparison to where he lived.
When he got married 20 years ago, he brought his wife from Tupelo, Mississippi to the town, which is the first place they lived. “I was very, very proud to bring her into our almost 600-square-foot apartment. And we really, really loved having a child here. And then we moved away a little bit for a little while, but then I moved back to Bloomfield,” he said.
Rev. Jesse White: White is a minister and has two adult daughters, who grew up in the Bloomfield school system. She said that while she is originally from Florida, she was brought to the town at 17 by her older sister who lived there.
White first resided in Hartford, before officially buying a home in the town — in 2004.
“I’m grateful that my children have the privilege of going to Bloomfield schools and graduating and going on to start out that way… Bloomfield is a special little place.
When my children were small, the neighbors actually looked out for them. I did not worry about nobody taking them or doing anything bad to them, because Bloomfield was just that kind of community. And it still is,” she said.
Cindi Lloyd: Lloyd said she was born and raised in Bloomfield, as her parents moved from Newark, New Jersey, before she was born. She said it has been “an odyssey of wonder” living in the town that becomes even better as she reflects on her upbringing in the town.
An avid traveler since childhood, this gave her perspective to see what was going on around her and that there was really no other place like Bloomfield, she said.
“The experience was incredible. Bloomfield (was) in the top school districts when I was coming up in the seventies … at a time when they were ahead of the curve, integrating schools in the early 1970s when there were race riots over integration in Boston in 1985. Bloomfield has always been welcoming, open, integrated and that vein still continues today,” she said.
She later became the first female police officer of color in the town, for which she credits her parents, Bloomfield family, for her first real career opportunity that has made her who she is today.
As Black residents: Lloyd said she did not recall many challenges while attending Bloomfield Public Schools, but when she became a police officer, there were a few individuals who worked to run her off force. But it was the help of individuals in the police department and community that helped her to push past the hurdles before she retired, she said.
Lloyd noted that she believes challenges she faced as a police officer are not indicative of the town itself, but are indicative of being a female in the field.
White said when she first moved to the town with her children from Hartford, she was in a neighborhood that was predominantly white and there were cultural differences that had to be overcome between herself and her neighbors, as they did not understand one another.
However, once those hurdles were overcome, White said that she and her neighbors became the best of friends and would do anything for one another. Always a working mother since her oldest was nine months old, her neighbors would watch out for her children when they came home from school — until she and her husband came home.
“It required of me to not look at people because of color. Can I be honest? I was born Floridian and I’m in my late 70s now. So, you know, when you’re born a certain way in a certain part of the country, you look at people differently. I had to put those differences aside and know that all people are people, just people and allow my children to experience that so that it would not affect them by the way I interacted with my neighbors,” she said.
Brown said she recalls that there were a number of challenges for her family as well. She said when her parents moved to a new street, they were either the second or third Black family there.
“They did experience, as they told me in later years, just being considered a family that didn’t quite belong. But I, you know, I go back to what has meant to us over the years, you know, by reaching out to people and those who did reach out to us, you know, that integration of mind and friendship came about relatively quickly,” she said.
But Brown said she remembers diverse childhood friends and elementary school friends who lived on that street, and that the town became a model for integration later on. “I think that integration helped teach the community about various people regardless of where we came from,” she said.
She recalled her mother sharing with her later in life an interaction she had in elementary school with a white teacher. “In second grade, the teacher told her, ‘you know, I really don’t see Sandra as a Black girl. I have to remember that she’s Black, you know. So, my mother taught me that her ownership of that conversation turned it around.
That was her opportunity to teach that teacher about children in general. If color is the first thing you see, you miss out, you miss out on the beauty, you miss out of the generosity and you miss out on them as people,” she said.
Learning from experiences, action
steps: Rev. White said that to keep building community within the town, it is important for parents, teachers, and educators to partner with one another to help the next generation. She recalls this happening as an active parent in the PTA when her children were in school.
“There was no decision made without a parent being in it, because it starts with the parent and the home. You cannot expect the school to do what the parent and the home (should do). So I literally rolled up my sleeves and participated. I was a working mother, but I was an active mother in school. They knew Miss Jessie in a good way. But if it wasn’t the right way, they knew me that way. That’s the foundation. If the foundation is laid properly, then the teachers, the educators and whoever else is to build on it. But if it’s not laid, they can’t build it. … That’s a lot for a parent, but that’s our responsibility as parents,” she said.
Lloyd agreed, but said it can’t just be within the schools, but all residents must become involved in all aspects of building the community.
White said that as the principal of the high school, he commits to calling on some of the individuals who came out to the event to speak to his students in their civics classes so they can understand the community they are in.