Connecticut 11-year-old starring in Amazon Prime series ‘The Underground Railroad’ honored in Hartford. Today is ‘Chase W. Dillon Day.’

Chase W. Dillon, 11, was holding court at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford Friday morning.

“Hollywood is a great place...but Connecticut is home, it’s where I’m from,” he said, standing on the back porch dressed in a sharp black suit, complete with a bow tie and pocket square.

Dillon was there to promote his role in “The Underground Railroad,” an Amazon Prime limited television series based on Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel of the same name, set in the antebellum American South. The series, created and directed by Barry Jenkins, an acclaimed director best known for his Academy Award-winning film Moonlight (2016), tells the story of a young enslaved woman’s journey to escape a Georgia plantation and claim her freedom.

A rising seventh grader at a Catholic middle school in West Hartford and who lives in the Hartford area, Dillon has the charm and poise of an actor many times his age. He was nine years old when he was cast in “The Underground Railroad,” after dazzling a New York casting director with his perfect recall of the script—even though he hadn’t been expected to memorize it. Later, he got the call from Jenkins that he would play Homer, a young boy who works as an accomplice for a slave catcher.

“When I heard him say, ‘You’re Homer,’ it went in slo-mo: Hommmerrr,” Dillon recounted with a hearty laugh. “The split second I heard it, I started jumping up and down.”

Since that call, it’s been a whirlwind of filming the series, which was primarily shot in Savannah, Ga. and interrupted for much of last year by the COVID-19 pandemic. The series premiered on May 14.

On Friday, Connecticut hailed Dillon as its own son, showering him with praise. Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin proclaimed June 4, 2021 “Chase W. Dillon Day.” Attorney General William Tong applauded Dillon’s work helping out at food distribution events organized by the Kingdom International Economic Development Corporation (KIEDC), a nonprofit Dillon’s mother runs, which fed more than 100,000 Connecticut families during the pandemic.

State Sen. Douglas McCrory, towering over Dillon with a wide smile, told him, “Brother, you are an inspiration.”

Metashar Dillon said she knew that her son, the oldest of her three children, was destined for the silver screen from an early age.

“He was about seven years old when he woke up from a dream and said, ‘Mommy, I can see myself in movies and on T.V.,’” she said.

Before “The Underground Railroad,” Dillon appeared in “That Damn Michael Che” (2021), a comedy show starring the Saturday Night Live star, as well as “Little America” (2020) and “First Wives Club” (2019).

Being cast in “The Underground Railroad” significantly increases Dillon’s stature on the Hollywood stage: Variety has hailed his performance as “precocious” and “brilliantly acted.” But for Dillon, it’s the historical thrust of the show that is the most meaningful. The series is “about what happened to my culture, what happened to my people,” he said.

“When I got the script, I felt something in it that went into me,” he recalled. “I was literally telling my mom, ‘Ma, I got this. This is mine.’”

In her remarks at the Stowe Center, Bloomfield Mayor Suzette DeBeatham-Brown impressed upon Dillon the importance of telling “our stories at such an early age, talking about Black history and what we had to go through.”

Dillon wiped away tears as he thanked the politicians, his mother and “aunties,” including Yvonne Davis.

“God has opened a big door for you,” Davis told him. “The Red Sea has parted, and now you’re going to walk.”

Eliza Fawcett can be reached at elfawcett@courant.com.