Sue Roman is a longtime Newtown resident who recently launched a project called “Why Is Newtown So White?” to research racial history in town.

Roman is no stranger to leading thought-provoking initiatives, as she currently works as a documentary filmmaker to support people and organizations working for social change. She is also the former editor/publisher/president of Taunton Press.

Her inspiration to create “Why Is Newtown So White?” began a couple years ago when she was researching demographics and saw how high the white percentage of the population was in Newtown.

“That didn’t surprise me, because I live here,” Roman said. “What surprised me was that half of the towns in Connecticut are even more white than Newtown. There is a pattern in Connecticut where white people are over-represented in suburban and rural areas and people of color are over-represented in the cities. An honest name for this is segregation.”

With this information, she wanted to understand the history of how it came to be, and decided that Newtown was the best place to begin her investigation.

“I grew up in Newtown, and the vibe I picked up was that segregation Connecticut-style was ‘natural.’ As if it were the way things were meant to be,” Roman said. “I picked the title [“Why Is Newtown So White?”] to emphasize that there is nothing ‘natural’ about it. It is a result of 300 years of economics and beliefs that led to policies, laws, and behaviors.”

Roman felt the crucial need to bring her project to fruition after news began to spread about the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes, in May 2020.

“The killing of George Floyd spurred me into action. I felt that if I didn’t actively work to expose the role of racism where I lived, then I would be perpetuating it for another generation. I knew there were others in Newtown who felt the same way,” Roman said.

She began making phone calls and put an announcement on Facebook to assemble a team to work on the project with her, which started in the summer of 2020.

“Working on the project with me right now are Paul D’Agostino, Linda O’Sullivan, Julia Hammond, and Jan Brookes,” Roman said. “We meet once a week by Zoom, and people report in what they have uncovered and what questions they’d like to pursue.”

So far, the group has done a combination of reading about national/state trends and material pertaining to local history as well as interviewing people for their personal insight.

Roman says the group is interested in having more people join them in doing research. They are also looking to hear directly from people who have had first-hand experience with the way race and ethnicity have influenced who has lived in Newtown.

And while the pandemic has made accessing certain historical documents difficult, she says the group would like to continue their research by specifically looking though deeds or other documents.

“This project is not about blaming or shaming anyone for our lack of diversity,” Roman assured. “It is about re-learning the history that we don’t currently remember.”

She shared some of the history she uncovered, included how one in eight households in colonial Connecticut owned slaves — even prominent families in Newtown and church ministers — and that in World War II, when housing development took off in places like Newtown, the Veterans Administration provided mortgages to white GIs, but not black GIs.

“If we are going to imagine and make a better future for all, we have to tell the truth about our past,” Roman said.

While the project is still evolving, Roman is focusing on presenting the group’s research online at whyisnewtownsowhite.info. She hopes to create a public display with information, print her findings in publications, and give talks to local groups.

Roman anticipates the project will be completed by next fall.

“We continue to find that it wasn’t one thing that has caused Newtown to be so white, but a number of things — land use policies, economic incentives, lack of regional government, and attitudes among them,” Roman said. “We continue to learn, and we welcome others who want to learn along with us.”

To stay up to date with new research added to the “Why Is Newtown So White?” project or to contact the group, visit whyisnewtownsowhite.info.