The school children who attended the Norwich NAACP’s14th annual Sweet Potato Festival, Saturday at St. Mary Church in Norwich, had the ultimate learning experience – a hands on lesson. They sang, read poems and discussed the past and the present. City officials and local politicians of all stripes mingled with black Eastern Connecticut residents. Educators say sensory experiences are the best way to teach history lessons and what better sense to use then smell, while walking by a full spread of chicken and sweet potato fixings.

We can all learn something from Friday’s educational talk by John Mancini, a senior research at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum. He talked about not pigeonholing people by identifying them by race. Specifically, he showed just how much Native Americans, blacks and whites mixed during the 18th and 19th centuries. He also said that the boundaries of the reservation were not as fixed as some might imagine.