Witness Stones Project, Inc.

Restoring History & Honoring Humanity

Education

How the Aftermath of the Civil War Helps Us Understand Trumpism

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David W. Blight, the Pulitzer-Prize winning historian and Yale Professor, spoke about How the Aftermath of the Civil War Helps Us Understand Trumpism on February 11, 2021.

No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America’s collective memory as the Civil War. In the war’s aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. Blight’s 2001 book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America’s national reunion.

The lecture was sponsored by Witness Stones Project affiliate Witness to History: Slavery in Guilford. Witness to History seeks to uncover the history of slavery in our town, examine its legacy, and share what we learn.

We invite you to watch the lecture here:

Racial Trauma: Unchaining Ancestors’ Stories to Heal Cities

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Students listening to the talks their classmates are giving / Photo courtesy of Douglas Nygren

By Susana F. Molina in The Urban Activist on February 22, 2021

February is Afro-American History Month. It pays tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity. This year’s commemoration, eight months after the events in Minneapolis, has turned out in a different tone. The racial trauma of an unpayable moral debt lingers over American cities.

Since the Black Awakening of the 1960s Americans have felt more confident about the importance of black history and the contributions of Afro-Americans to history and culture. Across the Atlantic the Civil Rights movements of the sixties made young generations of Germans break with a period of silence imposed by their parents about national-socialism and the Holocaust. They started a long process to come to terms with their history. But have Americans done the same with slavery? Continue reading.

Kingswood Oxford Students Make Important Progress in Witness Stones Project

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In the Kingswood Oxford News published on January 21, 2021.

The Witness Stones Project is an ongoing one in the Kingswood Oxford School history department each year that engages the students in authentic, real-world learning. The project seeks to honor the humanity and contributions of the enslaved people who helped build the community we live in today. Since its inception in 2019, students work to build on the work that was done by classmates before them. Each year, different pieces of the puzzle are uncovered, carefully put into place, and a bigger piece of the local historical fabric completed. Continue reading.

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