CCSU Students Confront A “Hurtful” Symbol of Racism At City Hall
By John McNamara
NEW BRITAIN – Taina Manick, a senior and President of the Social Work Club at Central Connecticut State University, didn’t expect to see what she saw at the Registrar of Voters office on Monday.
Taina went to City Hall to pick up voter registration cards and information for a campus drive to sign up new voters this week at the Stanley Street campus. Manick, invited into Republican Registrar Peter Gostin’s office, saw a remnant of U.S. history that greatly disturbed her– a Confederate Flag in a display of other flag memorabilia in the 5th floor window of Gostin’s office.
“I couldn’t believe I saw it at City Hall,” Manick said after her visit, calling it “inappropriate” for a symbol of slavery to be there. Manick returned to the Registrars’ office on Tuesday with two other CCSU social work students and representatives of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG) where Taina is an intern and asked to meet with Gostin again.
Registrar Gostin obliged and invited the group into an adjacent meeting room where Manick, a New Haven native and registered New Britain voter, again lodged her complaint about the Confederate flag that persists in the 21st century as an icon of a militant white nationalist movement.
The Confederacy is a symbol of “Jim Crow” laws and a history of voter suppression since the Civil War. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which has pushed for removal of the Confederate Flags from official state agency logos and buildings in Alabama and elsewhere, calls the Confederate flag a “hate symbol.”
Manick pressed Gostin about the “hurtful” impact the flag has especially on African Americans like her.
Gostin acknowledged that history and the flag’s symbolism but said he harbors none of those views either personally or as one of the city’s chief election officials. “It’s something I put there 14 years ago,” explained Gostin, saying it belonged to his son when he was in school. “You’re the first person in 14 years ever to say anything to me. I don’t have the public usually come into my office and there hasn’t been anyone, Black, White, Hispanic, or anyone who have ever said anything else about it.”
Unconvinced, Manick said “the flag let me know what I needed to know.” She said she “was offended and spoke with another (City Hall) employee who said they didn’t feel comfortable here and that they were going to leave the job.”
At the end of a brief dialogue between Gostin and the CCSU students, Manick asked Gostin if he was open to removing the Confederate Flag. Without hesitation Gostin agreed and the symbol of Jim Crow, slavery and voter suppression so upsetting to Taina Manick on Monday was thrown in the trash barrel at City Hall on Tuesday.
