THE VIEW FROM HERE
This month, I am thrilled to tell you that the UUSR, along with UUSR friend, Lise Breen, and with help from the Gloucester UU church, has received a $2000 matching grant from the Essex National Heritage Trust! We are so pleased with the grant and hope that it is the first of several that we will be working on jointly with our UU sisters and brothers in Gloucester.
A great surprise at the ceremony attended by UUSR member Chris Doyle and Lise Breen, was that our grant won the highest number of votes by the Essex National Heritage Trust board! While we are thrilled with being Number 1, we are also so happy to see what other wonderful projects are being done all over Essex county. The Grant Application that the UUSR and Lise Breen submitted looked something like this:
Project Title: Slavery and Abolition on Cape Ann: A Virtual Trail Prototype
Project Description: Matching funds to develop a prototype of a web-based trail to understand Cape Ann’s involvement in slavery and abolition.
Project Summary: There is a growing awareness of the legacy of slavery. Cape Ann was involved in colonial-era slavery, the international slave trade, and abolition work; but, this history is almost unknown. Nevertheless, local organizations are determined to set the record straight. We propose to build a prototype of a website to identify and interpret sites – primarily in Gloucester and Rockport – related to aspects of slavery and African American history.
The Trail will include the homes and churches of black activists, former slaves, slave ship captains and others involved in the slave trade. The website will include an interactive map connected to primary source documents supplemented with images. By placing these sites in historical context, the website will encourage visits, research, and discussion.
The matching funds will be used for:
1) Continuing research on existing examples of digital trails, as well as more research on the people who lived and worked in Rockport and Gloucester to both further the cause of slavery, and work against it.
2) Developing a prototype version of the website using one trail site for review and testing.
I won’t be mentioning most of the sites but know that the UUSR will be on the trail: In 1861, the lecture of abolitionist, Parker Pillsbury, was interrupted by a smoke bomb. No one was hurt, for which we are grateful.
While we no longer need to fight against abolition, racism and oppression of minorities of all kinds hasn’t ended and if you haven’t had the chance to come to the weekly Conversations on Race, please join us! You can also take a look at some of the books and films we have studied and reviewed together:
Debbie Irving, Waking Up White; or
Ta Nehesi Coates, Between the World and Me,
You could also watch UU minister the Rev Mark Morrison Reed’s talk on the 50th Anniversary of the Crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The bridge was the site of the conflict known as Bloody Sunday in 1965, when armed policemen attacked civil rights demonstrators with billy clubs and tear gas as they were peacefully marching across the bridge named for a former Confederate brigadier general, US Senator from Alabama, and Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.
These books and film clips are not necessarily easy but they are one way to put our principles into action. As people of privilege, whether through our so-called skin color, our gender matching our preferred identity, our relative wealth, or our ability to see, hear and walk, we have an obligation to find out about those who have no such privilege. Remember that comfort is overrated.
We are all on a journey of learning and listening together!
See you at 4 Cleaves Street!
Rev Susan