Evening Ceremony Celebrates Asylum Hill Congregational Church on Its Centennial

The church held a conference on “The Urban Church” as part of its celebration of its centennial on January 18, 1965.

The church would rededicate its building on March 23, 1965.

1. “The Governor spoke at a centennial celebration of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church at which two other speakers told of the future role of the church at the corner of Asylum Avenue and Sigourney Street hopes to play in the life of the city.”
2. “Turning to developments in Alabama, the Governor said: ‘How ironic it is, at a time when we are making such advances in science and technology, that the distance from a church in Selma, Ala.; to that city’s courthouse seems more difficult to traverse than the distance from the earth to the moon.”
3. From Dempsey’s speech: “A government regarded as some remote agency, separated from the people, cannot correct the injustices.  However, a government of all the people – a government in which all the people participate – can correct it, and will correct it.”
4. “The Governor said a ‘partial list’ of the state’s present needs would include ‘a consolidated department of correction, a law to make possession of liquor by minors illegal, the construction of needed highways, more housing for the elderly, community-based treatment centers for the mentally ill and mentally retarded.’”

1. John Dempsey (1915-1989) was governor of Connecticut.
2. Frederick U. Conrad, Jr. was a member of the church’s board of deacons.

Unattributed, “Dempsey talks on rights at church's centennial,” Hartford Courant, March 22, 1965, page 1.