Truth and Reconciliation
Reconciling past injustices is a central ingredient to healing and progress in human relations and ultimately, the creation and maintenance of a civil society is built on justice. A particular type of injustice that has historically received little reconciliation is the legacy of terrorism inflicted on African Americans during the period of reconstruction.
Truth & Reconciliation Project Trip – March 2022
Miami University would like to announce a Truth & Reconciliation Project trip to Montgomery, Alabama on March 21-24, 2022. This project is a continuation of the work of Drs. Anthony James and Valerie Carmichael and the Butler County Truth & Reconciliation Coalition. In line with the Equal Justice Initiative Community Remembrance Project, this trip will promote community-wide conversations about this period in U.S. History. Both Miami University personnel and residents of Butler County are eligible to participate in the trip. This project is led by Dr. Anthony James, Dr. Valerie Carmichael, Mr. Randi Thomas, and Mr. D’Angelo Solomon.
Deadline to complete the form is December 1, 2021.
EJI Racial Justice Essay Virtual Writing Workshop
December 7th, 2021 at 5pm
Join us for a virtual workshop in which high school students will be able to receive guidance/help with drafting, editing, and writing their essays for the competition.
Equal Justice Initiative (EJI)
Founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and bestselling author of Just Mercy, EJI is a private, nonprofit organization that is committed to changing the narrative about race in America.
In addition to providing educational materials and conducting research for criminal justice reform, EJI has taken the lead on reconciliation and a commitment to racial justice through the establishment of the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery Alabama.
Courtesy of EJI.org
Lynching in America: A Community Remembrance Project
To create greater awareness and understanding about racial terror lynchings and begin a necessary conversation that advances truth and reconciliation, EJI is working with communities to collect soil from lynching sites across the country and erect historical markers and monuments in these spaces.
Truth and Reconciliation Project (FSW591)
The Miami University Graduate School and Department of Family Science and Social Work have collaborated to offer a one credit hour Spring 2019 graduate seminar course titled "Truth and Reconciliation Project." The broader vision of the course is to promote EJI's Community Remembrance Project, specifically as it relates to southwest Ohio.
The seminar course participants were charged with investigating two lynching incidents that occurred in the late 1800s within Butler County and specifically, in Oxford, Ohio. Specific elements of the course included a Community Remembrance Event held uptown on Monday, May 13, to honor those victims and their families. The class was also tasked with collecting soil from the lynching sites and delivering those soil collections to EJI's Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, where jars from across the nation are exhibited.
Following the visit to Montgomery, the course leaders, the Dr. Anthony James and Dr. Valerie Robinson, presented at the 9th Annual National Civil Rights Conference in Birmingham, Alabama in June 2019.
The broader vision for Miami's "Truth and Reconciliation Project" is a continued focus on the work that remains left to be done in advancing truth and reconciliation around race in America and honestly confronting the legacy of slavery, lynching, and segregation.
Community Remembrance Project Coalition
Oxford City Council passed Resolution No. 7268 for our Community Remembrance Coalition's Historical Marker Project. A narrative marker was erected and unveiled on June 21, 2021, in the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Park in Uptown Oxford describing the devastating racial terror violence that once took place in the City of Oxford claiming the lives of Henry Corbin (January 14, 1892) and Simeon Garnett (September 3, 1877). This project and the other engagement efforts that our Community Remembrance Project Coalition develop, center the African American experience of racial injustice, empower African American community members who have directly borne this trauma, and invite the entire community to use truth and give voice to those experiences and expose their legacies.
Enacting Truth and Reconciliation Through Community-University Partnerships: A Grassroots Approach
Historic Marker Unveiling Ceremony
Lynchings Remembered
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala.
In a three-part series for The Cincinnati Enquirer, Mark Curnutte covers a legacy of terrorism close to home. The articles were published just days following the April 26, 2018, opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice—the first national memorial to African-American victims of lynching.
Lynching Memorial Includes Six Killed Near Cincinnati (PDF)
Descendant tries to find truth behind lynching (PDF)
Anger led to 8 Boone Co. lynchings (PDF)
Mark Curnutte ('84) teaches sociology and journalism at Miami while reporting for The Cincinnati Enquirer.
The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration
In Montgomery, Alabama, visitors encounter a powerful sense of place when they enter EJI's Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. The 11,000-square-foot museum is built on the site of a former warehouse where enslaved black people were imprisoned, and is located midway between an historic slave market and the main river dock and train station where tens of thousands of enslaved people were trafficked during the height of the domestic slave trade.
The Legacy Museum employs unique technology to dramatize the enslavement of African Americans, the evolution of racial terror lynchings, legalized racial segregation and racial hierarchy in America. Relying on rarely seen first-person accounts of the domestic slave trade, EJI’s critically acclaimed research materials, videography, exhibits on lynching and recently composed content on segregation, this 11,000-square-foot museum explores the history of racial inequality and its relationship to a range of contemporary issues from mass incarceration to police violence.