Monumental Futures: Truth-Telling, Friendship, and Repairing the Legacies of a Louisiana Race Massacre

📅 Thursday, February 20
🕑 7:00 PM
📍 Convocation Hall

To tune in via zoom click: https://sewanee-edu.zoom.us/j/92724340707

Event Description: The Roberson Project is bringing the Rev. Avery Hamilton and Mr. Dean Woods to come to Sewanee on Thursday, Feb. 20, to tell their story of defying 150 years of lies and misinformation by telling the truth about a white vigilante militia’s massacre of more than 50 Black men in the town of Colfax, Louisiana, in 1873.

For generations, most of the white people of Colfax and Louisiana as a whole celebrated the suppression of the “Colfax Riot,” a violent event commemorated by a state historical marker on the courthouse grounds of Colfax. According to the reigning mythology, the white vigilantes put down a wild uprising by former enslaved men, restored social order, and helped end Reconstruction in Louisiana and eventually the rest of the South. More than two years ago, Hamilton, a direct descendant of the first man murdered in the massacre, and Woods, a direct descendant of one of the vigilantes, joined forces to tell the truth about the event, working successfully to remove the historical marker and to replace it nearby with a new memorial honoring the Black men murdered that day. (See their website www.colfaxmemorial.org).

The Roberson Project is bringing them to campus to speak on the evening of Feb. 20 in Convocation Hall about their individual and collective journeys as partners and friends, brought together by a determination to tell the truth and change the narrative about the massacre. Their journeys have been widely reported in the media, and a PBS documentary is currently in production. In addition, the Rev. Hamilton is a direct descendant of an enslaved family owned by Meredith Calhoun, who pledged $25,000 to the founding of the University of the South. His journey to our campus is part of the Roberson Project’s effort to identify and open our ears to the descendants of the persons enslaved by Sewanee’s founders.

This event is made possible with support from the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Center, the Department of History, All Saint’s Chapel, and University Lectures Committee. For more information about The Roberson Project and the events it sponsors, please visit our website: https://robersonproject.sewanee.edu/.

To tune in via zoom click: https://sewanee-edu.zoom.us/j/92724340707