A longer one-hour version of the Jesse Lee Bond story
Responsible for Remembering
Facing History and Ourselves is an organization that helps high school students recognize racism, anti-semitism, and all forms of bigotry so they can prevent it from happening in the future. It empowers students through knowledge of self and history so that they can become upstanders, people who will stand up and act for justice on behalf of their community.
Volunteer Opportunities - Summer 2017
LSP member Prof. Margaret Vandiver is hoping to make some progress on LSP research this summer and would welcome help from anyone who has the time and the interest! Here’s what she's hoping to work on:
Hundreds Gather to Oppose to Memphis’ Confederate Monuments
One by one, dozens of people — black, white, young and old, a descendant of slave trader Nathan Bedford Forrest and descendants of slaves — spoke out against the monuments, namely those of Forrest and the singular Confederate States president Jefferson Davis, that sit in city parks.
The 9:01: Memphians gather to launch movement against Confederate monuments
Roughly 50 more Memphians followed last night at Bruce Elementary School, in the first public meeting of Memphians for Removal of Confederate Monuments, speaking in favor of removing Memphis monuments to former Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. They spoke beneath a pre-existing, hand-colored banner proclaiming “We Are Conquerors,” an apparently unconnected piece of school paraphernalia. Perhaps it will prove prophetic.
EJI Launches Lynching in America Interactive Online Experience
EJI is excited to announce today's official launch of Lynching in America, a new interactive digital experience created in partnership with Google.
The lynching of Ell Persons finds a lasting imprint on the Memphis NAACP chapter
“We took it to heart. On the 100th year (of Ell Persons’ lynching), we could do something major and involve the whole community in another way…so we started working,” said Pan Awsumb, volunteer with the Lynching Sites Project.
Seeking repentance for a 100-year-old lynching
On Sunday afternoon, in a field between the Wolf River and a miniature golf course, several hundred people met under a tent. From a stage brimming with Memphis interfaith leaders, musicians and high school students organized by the Lynching Sites Project, words affirming the purpose for gathering were spoken: Prayer, repentance and healing from the events that happened 100 years ago on the same land.
Ceremony Of Remembrance Commemorates Brutal Lynching One Hundred Years Ago
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (localmemphis.com) - Exactly one century ago, Michelle Lisa Whitney's great uncle - Ell Persons - died a brutal death, as a large crowd gathered to watch a white mob burn the woodcutter alive, decapitate, and dismember him near the Wolf River in what today is northeast Memphis.
"The thing that really gets to me is the suffering," Michelle said.
Ell Persons lynching remembered 100 years later
On the surface, there appeared to be little common ground and little to celebrate.
A 16-year-old white girl, murdered while bicycling across a bridge on her way to school, and a black woodcutter who lived nearby burned alive for the crime. Two tragedies, no legal resolution to either.
And yet, not one but two gatherings Sunday afternoon found joy in loss, hope in injustice.
Present Day Issues Surface in Centennial of Persons Lynching
The interfaith prayer ceremony Sunday, May 21, marking the centennial of the lynching of Ell Persons included several mentions of the removal of Confederate monuments in the last month in New Orleans.
But during the two-hour ceremony in a field off Summer Avenue near the lynching site there were no overt calls for the city of Memphis to take the same approach of removing such monuments without advance notice.
U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis called the actions in New Orleans “commendable.”
Descendants of 1917 lynching's 2 victims gather for truth, healing
Descendants of both victims — the black man who was lynched and the white girl he was falsely accused of murdering — plan to be here for Sunday's prayer service.
The two women, one from Chicago, the other from Memphis, plan to go down to the river, rain or shine, to stand and pray with hundreds of others near the site of both brutal murders.
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"We have to acknowledge and address the pain before we can begin to heal," said Laura Wilfong Miller. Her great-grandmother and Antonetty Rappel's mother were sisters.