School News

Original music composition of Douglas native showcased

Worcester State University’s Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) Department has announced that Douglas native and Worcester State 2022

graduate Jonathan Paine recently showcased original music composition, “The Moon God,” as part of a recent Thesis Art Exhibition in Wor-

cester State’s Mary Cosgrove Dolphin Gallery. Paine, a Visual and Performing Arts Major and Music Composition and Technology Minor, joined eight fellow seniors in presenting an extensive variety of thesis work that included paintings, illustrations, mixed media art, music composition, and video animation, to name a few styles. Visual and video highlights continue to be available for viewing and listening via the Gallery’s website at https://wsuvpagallery.weebly.com/thesis-exhibition-2022.html.

Gallery exhibitions are free and open to the community. For more information regarding upcoming exhibits, visit https://wsuvpagallery.weebly.com. For more information about

VPA’s music offerings, contactVPAMusic @worces-

ter.edu.

ABOUT THE VISUAL AND

PERFORMING ARTS

DEPARTMENT

The Worcester State Visual

and Performing Arts Department offers interdisciplinary and specialized artistic education that prepares students for professional lives in the arts. Its educational spaces encompass the Fuller Theater, practice rooms for music, and art studios at the University’s Sagamore Studios. VPA students gain indepth knowledge of their preferred art form - art, music, or theatre - plus an understanding of what the arts have in common, and how they are performed and exhibited in the real world. Learn

more at www.worcester. edu/VPA or

connect with VPA on social media:

Facebook/VPAatWorcester State, Twitter and Instagram @WSUVPA. Follow our blog, The Artful Lancer, at WSUVPA.wordpress.com or subscribe to our YouTube channel, WSU VPA. Tanner Giacobbi and Katelyn Malley, both residents of Whitinsville were

among more than 285 seniors graduating in June from TEC Connections Academy (TECCA), the Commonwealth’s largest, public K-12 virtual school. TEC Connections Academy enrollment has grown steadily from about 240 students eight years ago to nearly 2,900 today, with students representing every county in Massachusetts. An in-person graduation celebration was held recently at Mechanics Hall in Worcester. “At TEC Connections

Academy, we pride ourselves in providing a world-class education in the online environment, while also preparing our students to thrive in a changing world. I am honored to congratulate our graduates and their families, many of whom have been with us online for

their full, four-year high school experience,” said superintendent Patrick Lattuca.

TEC Connections Academy is a tuition-free, online public school for K12 students that offers a safe and social

learning environment where empowered students direct their own educa-

tional journey. FMI on TEC Connections Academy, call 800-382-6010 or visit www.

TECConnections Academy.com.

Jonathan Paine

Xaverian Brothers HS Honor Roll

Dr. Jacob Conca, Head of School at Xaverian Brothers High School, is pleased to announce that the following 465 students from 76 cities and towns

have been named to the honor roll for

the fourth marking period of the 20212022 school year. The Xaverian Brothers High School honor roll has three designation levels: Ryken Honors indicates all marks are A- or above. First Honors indicates all

marks are B or above. Second Honors

indicates all marks are B- or above

The following has been sorted by state, city, honor level, grade, and name. Of note, seniors are not included for the fourth quarter honor roll; this list represents only those students in grades seven through eleven who achieved honor roll status.

Mendon: Michael Albert, 7, Ryken Honors, Shane Belleville, 10, First Honors, Conor Belleville, 9, First Honors and Jonathan Santosuosso, 7, First Honors

Uxbridge: Nathaniel Badzmierowski, 9, Ryken Honors FMI visit www. xbhs.com.

Residents graduate from TEC

KEARNS

0 DUMPSTER

“Fugitive as I am”: Frederick Douglass in Uxbridge

by CJ Martin

“A beautiful…sun shone upon” the Uxbridge Unitarian Church on the afternoon of June 25th, 1845. As “the fair works of nature’s loveliness

sparkled on all sides” of the commodious building, the voice of Frederick Douglass, America’s most famous abolitionist and “prophet of freedom,” boomed toward its pews. A red sign facing North Main Street now commemorates this event. But the story of how a church pulpit in a little town in Central Massachusetts attracted perhaps the most transformative orator in the country’s history – and what happened that day – has, until now, been hidden in the shadows of Uxbridge’s rich history. Several things conspired to bring Frederick Douglass to Uxbridge in the early summer of 1845. The audience he addressed had assembled for the

Worcester County (South Division) Anti-Slavery Society’s quarterly meeting, and leading the meeting was world-renowned abolitionist William

Lloyd Garrison. It was a decade in the making for the small town of roughly 2,000 people. 400 residents – a full quarter of the town’s population – had joined the Uxbridge Anti-Slavery Society and professed the movement’s twin goals, the immediate abolition of slavery and civil and political rights for Black Americans. This, in an era where slavery was well known to be the bedrock of the country’s economy and racial discrimination was on the law

books in every state, including Massachusetts. Its rapid growth and endurance was doubtlessly fostered by the leadership of the town’s leading businessman and radical egalitarian, Effingham L. Capron (who chaired the meeting), and it helped spawn the storied career of forward-thinking activist Abby Kelley. Kelley’s husband Stephen also addressed the meeting, though she did not; she was busy organizing local anti-slavery societies in Ohio. And so, it was clear that Uxbridge was already “destined to be a green spot in the Anti-Slavery enterprize.” It was also clear that Frederick Douglass was destined for greatness. A young man of twenty-seven when he arrived in Uxbridge (not yet the gray-haired statesmen of most photographs), he had largely taught himself to read and studied oratory while enslaved in Maryland. After his escape, he became a popular speaker on the abolitionist circuit, but now, he was on the cusp of international fame. Eight weeks prior, his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass had hit the presses, and was about to become an interna-

tional bestseller. He now had to be

careful where he went, because while he had spent the previous four years working and freely traveling the Northeast – in the eyes of the law, he was still enslaved. Indeed, he had recently announced plans to travel to the United Kingdom and Ireland – to both fundraise for the abolitionist

movement and remain safely outside of US law.

And so he took the pulpit at Uxbridge Unitarian, bearing witness to the abuse, the violence, and the psychological torture of enslavement. “He spoke as no one can, who has not felt the cold steel of oppression piercing the soul,” a witness wrote. He then reiterated a major theme of his autobiography, the hypocrisy of American Christendom in its refusal to confront slavery in a united voice. On this note, Douglass offered some local commentary, as well: “Ay” he said, “if I go bleeding and panting, fugitive as I am, to yonder Orthodox church, I am bolted out by your Rev. Mr. Orcutt,” referencing the more conservative Congregational Church, just across the town common. Its minister, John Orcutt had “cravenly” warned his congregants not to attend the abolitionist meeting. Orcutt was an agent for the American Colonization Society, an organization run primarily by enslavers (including presidents James Monroe and Andrew Jackson) which sought to remove free Black Americans to Africa

– an idea reviled by abolitionists. The urgency of the times was reflected in the rest of the meeting, which lasted into the next day. Prominent were vehement denunciations of US government’s impending annexation of Texas. The vast new territory, abolitionists feared, could result in the creation of five new slave states – ten new US

Senators and dozens of new US

Congressmen doing the bidding of enslavers. The closing speaker was Charles Lenox Remond, a Black New Englander and accomplished abolitionist speaker and intellectual, famous for attending the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London and sitting in the galleries when women were not allowed a place on the convention floor. Remond spoke “eloquently” on white supremacy’s strangling of white people’s freedom, and thanked Uxbridge for the kind treatment he had received –

unusual in a time when, even in the North, Black travelers were often relegated to “jim crow” areas on public

conveyances. “The truth will prevail,” exhorted an eyewitness to the meeting. A phrase that could be written about any one of the thousands of Frederick Douglass’s speeches, and a perfect one to describe one of the proudest days in Uxbridge’s storied history.

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