Madison community historians Betty Banks and Pia M. Kinney James will celebrate Black History Month at the Fitchburg Senior Center by hosting “Stony the Road Story: A Look at Black History” at a special Lunch & Learn event on Wednesday, Feb. 26, noon-1 p.m.
Banks grew up in South Madison in the 1950s before moving to East Dayton Street and attending Lapham Elementary School. She graduated from Madison Central High School and embarked on a career dedicated to serving children and supporting families.
As the director of Family Enhancement’s Early Childhood Family Resource Center, Banks empowered young parents to strengthen their parenting skills. In retirement, her commitment to community service never wavered as she continued to volunteer and mentor younger generations.
“My grandparents came here at the turn of the 20th century and settled on East Dayton Street, and I’ve got the history of that first settlement of Black people,” Banks tells Madison365. “Stony the Road is the history of Madison’s early Black settlers between 1900 and 1950. We will be talking about that history and what we’re going to do is choose photos and stories] from our collection, and we’ll have a PowerPoint presentation by me and Pia [Kinney James.
“Much of this history [of Stony the Road] is unknown history, because what we did is that we made a call to the community, and people brought us their history, and we scanned pictures and documents and stuff like that, and they told us their stories,” Banks adds. “That’s what Stony the Road is… the history in stories from the descendants of early African American settlers in Madison.”
That’s one of the things that Banks and Kinney-James will talk about at the Fitchburg Senior Center’s Lunch & Learn, a program now in its third year that looks to educate the community, share resources, and offer a space for residents of all ages to get together and hear about different topics.
Banks and Kinney James, the first African American female to serve as an officer in the Madison Police Department, are both daughters of the first African-American settlers in the Madison area.
“Pia has done a lot of research on her own family history, too. And we have been busy figuring out exactly what we both want to talk about,” Banks says.
Bank’s passion for preserving history led to the creation of ‘Stony The Road,’ a project celebrating African-American pioneers in Madison.
“I believe that it was in 2007 when we first started talking to the community about Stony the Road,” says Banks, who co-founded the Wisconsin Free Press and The Madison Times in 1991. Later, she co-founded Club TNT (Today Not Tomorrow) with the late Gaddi Ben Dan to strengthen families and use the medium of entertainment and technology to inform and educate, children, youth and young adults.
Banks says she is excited that some pieces of the Stony The Road collection are going to be in Madison’s Public Market that is expected to debut on Madison’s East Side later this year.
“So that is another thing that [Club TNT director of operations and programming] Jeannie [Erickson] and I are working on right now with the city in the Public Market Foundation. We’ve been meeting with the committee chair and foundation members, and really looking at what our contribution to the market will be,” Banks says. “We’ve got stories and photos from families and descendants of those early settlers. We think that this will be great for the Madison Public Market.”
In the meantime, Banks, along with Kinney James, is looking forward to the opportunity to explore and honor Black history at the upcoming Lunch and Learn while enjoying a meal with friends.
“We’ve done a couple of presentations, but COVID happened, Gaddi [Ben Dan] passed. We’ve slowed it down a bit, and so now we’re kind of getting back into connecting again with the community about the history of Madison. We hope that this will be an educational and fun event for people,” Banks says.
All are welcome to attend the Lunch & Learn. To register for “Stony the Road Story: A Look at Black History,” call (608)270-4290.
