By Trinity Rogers
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| The 'Steenth Street Project Team at the Legacy Museum |
On Sunday during the “Mothers of Gynecology” tour, Cynthia, Adrianna, and I were grabbing cupcakes when we struck up a conversation with a woman sitting on the windowsill near the treat table. This woman explained that she worked in archives and culture preservation in Washington, D.C. She asked us what we were studying, about the ‘Steenth Street Project, and what our plans and aspirations were post-grad. After we explained to her, she told us that she loved hearing what other people are working on because we are all working together – in a way she compared it to quiltmaking. She explained that each person, working towards their own personal projects and goals, helps to create a larger quilt. Each person, with their own goals and projects, is one thread in this massive quilt, she explained. It is each person’s job to protect and maintain their thread, and if everyone does this, then we can create a collective quilt with each bit of research, inquiry, and culture preservation effort. Her words summed up the trip perfectly for me: when we come together for a conference like ASALH we are seeing the quilt being made, watching each threat intertwine to create something beautiful.
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| Bryan Stevenson talking |
With each presentation and event we attended this past week, I could see the threads coming together. First, in Bryan Stevenson’s speech on Thursday, he laid out the ways in which our threads can be destroyed, misconstrued, or removed. He spoke about the ways in which Black people in America have been disenfranchised, murdered, and targeted, but above all this, he spoke about how we can still hold on to hope. His story about the woman who was digging at a lynching site on the side of a road in rural Alabama when she was approached by a white man was the perfect example of how rewarding and surprising hope can be. The woman was at first afraid that the man would cause her harm and considered lying to the man when he asked her what she was doing. She found in herself the courage and need to tell him that she was digging dirt because a man was lynched there, to which the man replied, “Can I help you?” The man’s response not only shocked the woman but also prompted her to accept his help. Following this interaction, the two shared a moment on the side of the road in which both of them were crying, and then the man followed the woman back to Montgomery to learn more about the Equal Justice Initiative and the remembrance movement. Stevenson’s story started with an edge of fear – that history may repeat itself and another Black person would see violence on the same soil – but it ended with the hope that these threads of history can be restored and put together to create something beautiful. This something beautiful was shown through the ending of our time at EJI’s Legacy Museum, which concluded with a bright, cheerful room of smiling Black faces of history – those who have started these threads and who are passing them to us now to continue and care for.
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| Dedication at the Memorial for Peace and Justice |
In our own effort to continue, this trip was a way to move our thread. Going beyond just our own research, ASALH gave me the opportunity to see the bigger picture – a shared sense that our work is in line with so many others, with the aim of recentering history. We all recognize how easily parts of history are marginalized and erased, and we all share a sense that we have to recenter history, to give a voice back to the erased and silenced.
This trip was enlightening and sobering in so many different ways, but the most impactful was the way in which it showed me a larger context for the work that we do. From the Legacy Museum to the “Mothers of Gynecology” tour, each experience provided an opportunity to better understand the context in which we live and do this work, and why we must continue our thread.
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| Cynthia, myself, and Adrianna with our sweet teas (a new phenomenon that I introduced to Cynthia and Adrianna--a drink that they ordered at every restaurant during the trip). |
