Tannery Pond Center presents our Tannery Talk: History, Heroes & Bipartisanship by Connor Williams
May 3 | 2 PM
Suggested donation at the door: $10
In 2021 and 2022, Adirondack resident Connor Williams worked for Congress as Lead Historian on their bipartisan "Naming Commission," tasked with ending Confederate commemorations across our Defense landscape. He was also tasked with finding real American military heroes to replace them—ones so inspiring that they could secure unanimous support from the three Republicans, one Democrat, and four retired flag officers who served as commissioners. Connor and the Commissioners were successful in their work, finishing on-time, under budget, and with broad bipartisan support. All of their recommendations were accepted and enacted.
Williams will reflect on his experiences achieving bipartisan successes in our recent past, detail the new namesakes that the Commission selected, and explain what it all tells us about the power of the past to inspire our faith in the future. He will also talk about the two "local" heroes the Commission selected: WWI soldier Henry Johnson (from Albany), and Civil War doctor and equal rights activist Mary Walker, who was a native of Oswego.
Connor's new book on his experience and the diverse examples of heroism that the Naming Commission elevated (A Promise Delivered) will be available for sale and signing immediately after the event.
Connor Williams
A scholar, teacher, and advocate of American history, Connor Williams shares the stories of our past to help shape the societies of our future. His formal historical training jointly focuses on United States History and African American Studies, and he researches, writes and teaches on more than two hundred years of the American past. In all his endeavors, Connor seeks to articulate and inform the connections between the actions of our past and the possibilities of our present, expanding public understandings of complex national and regional histories.
In 2021 and 2022, Connor served as the Lead Historian for the United States Congress’ “Naming Commission,” researching the history, causes and context of Department of Defense assets that commemorate Confederates or the Confederacy. He directed the Commission’s historical
initiatives, collaborated with other historians involved and invested in the Commission’s work, and engaged with both the general public and specific stakeholders. Connor advised the Commission through historical briefings and assisted in the research and presentation of potential new namesakes to the Naming Commissioners.
This work culminated with Connor’s direction in writing, revising, and editing the Naming Commission’s final reports to Congress. While the Naming Commission wrapped at the end of 2022, Connor still serves pro bono as the historian-of-record, guiding Defense entities, journalists, and other interested parties on the Commission’s historical conclusions and recommendations.
Connor’s book about that experience: A Promise Delivered: Ten American Heroes and the Battle to Rename Our Nation’s Military Bases will be published by MacMillan’s St. Martin’s imprint on Veteran’s Day 2025. His second book, considering how Americans more broadly remember the Civil War—and how they could remember it—is also under contract with St. Martin’s and due out in 2026. It is tentatively titled Our Domestic Enemy: The Myth of the Confederacy and America’s Triumph Over Treason in the Civil War.
Following the Naming Commission, Connor has continued to work in these broader fields of history, memory, and commemorations, advising and consulting other organizations seeking to acknowledge, reconcile and repair difficult parts of their legacies, including several charitable trusts, universities, and prominent independent schools throughout the nation. He is currently a part of the The Nantucket Project’s movement to foster constructive dialogues across deep political, religious, and ideological differences, while also teaching courses on history, memory and commemoration at Middlebury, where he did his undergraduate studies (Class of 2008.5).
Connor holds graduate degrees from Dartmouth College and Yale University. Among other fellowships, awards, and prizes he was a finalist for the Louis Pelzer Memorial Award, given to the best article written by any graduate student for his Master’s Thesis on diasporic influences upon Frederick Douglass’ political evolution. Connor has also taught at Yale University, Southern Connecticut State University and for the Yale College Writing Center. He has worked for Yale’s Manuscripts and Archives division and at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.
A native New-Yorker and aspiring maritimist and mountaineer, Connor currently lives with his family along the shores of Lake Champlain in the Adirondack Park, where he also serves as the Staff Historian for Great Camp Sagamore, a National Historic Landmark and former Vanderbilt estate, directing all history programming for several thousands of visitors each summer and fall. Most broadly, and via a variety of formats, Connor uses this role to conceive and execute innovative ways to teach environmental history, Gilded Age history, and the history of class, capitalism, industry and inequality to diverse public history audiences.