 Thank you all for joining us. Today we really do have a rare pleasure of welcoming two giants in the field to Columbia. Last fall during the advanced urban planning and historic preservation studio, the Alabama African American Civil Rights Heritage Sites Consortium based at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute was a keen partner that really enabled us to bring out very ambitious work in Montgomery versus shameless plug that studio report is just now turned into a physical poem. Eric Beckham, you'd like to say a little bit more about this. It'll be online shortly. It'll be online shortly, so that's good news. So please, do you care to join me? No. So here it is. Georgeette, are you coming up as well? No. All right. Well, I have with me here, Priscilla Cooper, who has been the project leader on this remarkable effort to enact a series of civil rights sites around the state of Alabama. In over the last two years, Educational Foundation America, World Money, and Spine, are jamming on supporting this work. And today she will tell us where they have been and where they are going. But you should all know about Priscilla. She served as the interim director of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. She was the vice president for the institutional program. She was instrumental in making sure that the whole district in Birmingham was nominated to carry the status as a national monument. And then, you know, sort of looked forward to spending more time with her grandkids and came out of retirement to spearhead this new effort. And we are really privileged to have her with us today. Tomorrow evening, for those of you who haven't heard, World Monuments Fund will be hosting an event at the time center at 6.30pm, where they will be sharing the oral history and content of their work with a broader audience. So if that's something of interest, come up to me afterwards. We can try to connect you to that. And thank you for being here to set up and doing more of the group. Thank you, Will. I think you can hear me fine, right? Yes? Yes. I do have brochures with me. I want to make sure others get it. Also going around, when you think about civil rights and places that you associate with civil rights, particularly communities, tell me one that you think of when you think of civil rights activities in this country. A place. There may be a movie, there's a big bridge. So thank you. Washington. Washington? Washington. Oh, okay. Yes. I can see we have some opportunity to introduce you to some of that history. We laugh about this organization, Group Collaboration, having such a long name. But I wanted to share with you why we have figured out another way to say it. African-American, these sites are all sites that were developed by and for the African-American community. There are other civil rights sites, particularly bus stations seem to be ones, that were not. They were the site of civil rights events or activities, but they were not places that actually earned and nurtured this movement. So African-American talk was important. Alabama, because we do view Alabama as the cradle of the movement, and it's the state that has actually three cities that were pivotal in changing national legislation, and they are Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma. So again, Alabama and African-American. Civil rights, even though one of the things that we're talking about is the legacy of these sites is much greater and longer. They're what we traditionally think of as the civil rights era of the 1950s and 60s. Civil rights is how the general public, the broad community, the tourism industry, even the presentation. That's how they identified these sites. So that was important. Heritage, because their heritage is deeper than those 10 to 20 years. We wanted to put heritage in there. Sites, they are buildings. From Soichcombe, we are a collaboration. So if you think I'm a shorter way to say I'm there, please share their history with me. And this is a little illustration because we have people who come to visit and really don't realize there's a lot of distance between these places. And each community is very different. We just made our work even more interesting. It's a challenge. Birmingham, and you can't really envision this in the context of the entire state, but Birmingham is the farthest north. All of these places are kind of the middle of the state. Alabama is a really long state. So Birmingham is the biggest city in Alabama right now. It has industrial history. It's very important in how things evolved there. It now has moved into education and service with the University of Alabama at Birmingham being the largest employer in the state. So it's changed dramatically. Montgomery is the capital of the state of Alabama, which makes it very interesting, unique in its own way. It also is the site of the first White House of the Confederacy. So they're just a position of civil rights and Confederacy. Selma. So Birmingham and Montgomery is about 90, 100 miles apart, about an hour hand drive. If you're going from Montgomery, White Hall is a really small community. It's part of the Black Valley that sits between Montgomery and Selma. We'll see the site when I go through the slides. Have any of you heard of the book Bloody Lounds by a sign, Jefferson? That's it. That's Lounds County. And then Selma, which of course, the movie Selma raised its prominence, but people know about Selma. Selma is a more of a rural community. It was the largest city in the Black Valley and faces some unique challenges. Greensboro is also part of the Black Valley, a really small community with a site that is very significant. And I'm going to give you an overview of the consortium, how it came to be and what it does. And then Georgia will talk more about efforts around revitalization and redevelopment. And I wanted to be sure to put this slide in because it is the people who make the consortium what it is and have made it such a great success. The consortium started when the Educational Foundation of America approached the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute about nominating actually specifically Selma sites to the World Minimums Fund Watch. We weren't familiar with the World Minimums Fund, we weren't familiar with EFA or Watch. And we learned that the World Minimums Fund primarily works overseas, and that's why we weren't as familiar with them. So, Georgia agreed to serve as historian and pool of the necessary documentation together for the nomination. And the first thing she said was, we can't just talk about Selma. If we're going to talk about civil rights in Alabama, Birmingham and Montgomery, so the focus of the application broadened. We had a convening before the application was submitted and it was obvious from that meeting and the energy at that meeting was carried over. People were excited that somebody cared. These are places that are significant, most of them unknown, all of them operating with very limited resources. And what I say is these people, all volunteers who've been laboring in the vineyard to preserve not only the places but their stories for decades. How long ago was 1965? 1960, you know. And nobody seemed to care. So that was the first thing that they were just excited that somebody wanted to know what they were doing to hear their stories. And as we came together and we were seated at a conference table, some of the things that emerged from that conversation was the need for preservation. And again, not just the buildings but also of the stories. They really wanted oral histories because as you can imagine, the civil rights generation is aging. Or as I say, if we have somebody on 50 at our meetings who unless a young person. So capturing that while those people were still available to tell those stories firsthand. And to be sure the stories were available for future generations. And future generations getting that next generation involved and excited and becoming advocates for preservation of these sites and telling those stories. Those were kind of the three things that rose to the top. We heard some wonderful stories and accounts from the people in the room about things they had experienced and why those sites were important. But it became clear that all of them shared some common needs, common issues. So even before I think the application went in February, we wouldn't know until September about the nomination. But even before we knew these sites would be selected, we talked with the Educational Foundation. They agreed to support a needs assessment so we could figure out exactly what the sites needed. And the consortium operates from a position of what I call collaborative leadership. We respond to what the sites need. We are not trying to develop a template. You know, everybody will do this in 2020 and everybody will do this because there are varying stages in their development. The other thing that Joy Jen and I share a concern about is what I call the mythology of the movement. When you think of the civil rights movement, what names do you think of? Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King. John Lewis. John Lewis. Oh, I'm so glad you know John Lewis. He's from Selma. But, you know, I said the popular narrative is... Rosa Parks. Troy. See, that's not how I make stories. See, it was a home and world out of one. The popular narrative is... Roxanne, Dr. King stood up and I was right with the world. You know, everything. And the story is so much richer and so much deeper and so much longer than that. So it's really the people that make this project work. And I just want to briefly share with you some of the signs. We're going to start in Montgomery. Where are we starting in Montgomery? No, no. This is the state capital. No, we're starting in Montgomery because Montgomery was the site of the bus boycott. That many of you asked the initial major first campaign of what we refer to as the modern civil rights movement. I'll go back to that one. In each city there are some places that have become iconic. And Montgomery is Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where Dr. King was pastor during the bus boycott. And the Parsonage, which is where the family lived and was bombed during his work there. So Dexter Avenue. The Benmore Hotel was a place of lodging. We have 20 sites within the current class of the consortium. Most of them 75% of churches. What do you think that is? They were the community hubs. This is where and this is the history that we hope to be able to share. Many of them started one was pre-Civil War and most of the rest of the war during the reconstruction era are the very early 20th century. So they had a long history of being the catalyst for community growth, education, economic, social services. The Benmore provided lodging during the era of segregation. And it also became a community hub. You're interested in preservation. This is one of the sites we're most concerned about. It's privately owned. I've learned a lot about the challenges. Property when you're doing this work has been abandoned for 10 or more years. The reason we have the Malden brothers barbershop is that that barbershop still operates. That's where Dr. King used to get his hair cut. But that's the only thing in that structure that is still operational. And that's what we're really concerned about. And it sits in a very important African American historic area, Centennial Hill. Which you will read about in this report. The Dr. Richard Harris House. This is a private home. Unfortunately, this family is very excited about its role as part of this history and this legacy. And excited about sharing it. Unfortunately, the matriarch of the family passed a couple weeks ago. But her daughter is our contact. This is where John Lewis and other freedom riders kidnapped or protected after they were attacked at the bus station. In Montgomery is part of the freedom ride. And Valda shares the upstairs room where they all sat. And then the upstairs room where young people were not allowed to go. The first status is also in Montgomery. It's called the Brickaday Church. Because when the old church was destroyed, the pastor said, on your way to church, you're going to pass construction sites and other sites and just bring a brick with you. And when you see it, so people bought a brick of that. And when you actually, I don't know if you can really tell here, but sections of the church, the brick is different. In different sections of the church. Reverend Abernathy, pastor here. This is another church that was under siege during the movement. And it's really just beginning to embrace its heritage and see the value of it. But we're really excited because one of the keys, people always ask, well, how did you pick those sites? Well, they were African-American. I knew that. But also there had to be someone, at least one person, who was a steward of the site. Who would come, get information, would share information. He wanted to move it forward. And again, as you were looking at community revitalization, community development, having key community stakeholders is essential. Jackson Community House. When I first went to this facility, I thought we were in the wrong place. Because when you pull up on the street, there are all these state, actually just the state capital. So it's surrounded by all these state buildings, the concrete and glass office buildings. And there's a tremendous story about the successful fight to keep state government from taking it over. But it was owned by the colored women's clubs. And if you've heard of the National Council on Negro Women, this was a local chapter of that. It was a home of many ex-indexes, but the first library, library for African-Americans in Montgomery, and the first licensed librarian of any race in the state of Alabama. Mount Zion, only two of them, with the exception of two churches, and this is one of them, the churches that we're working with still have active congregations. So they're still having church service there and hosting tourists and trying to figure out how to set their buildings and their stories. They call this the Memorial Annex, because this is the historic building. Mount Zion chats the story, and it's true, I'm afraid, of it being the location of the organization of the Montgomery Improvement Association. Isn't that one of the old kids connected to Frederick Douglass? I'm sorry? I think that's one of the old kids connected to Frederick Douglass, actually is preach. There's a white in the mountain. Oh, Mount Zion is very common. It's very good to have mothers on in the cinema. Oh, okay. Yeah, Frederick Douglass. Some of those, I'm sure you're correct. Some of the names you'll see in every community, you'll see them now. Yeah, I'll put Richard out in the design, because he gets confused with the A&E. Right. And then the A&E Zion. We have some that are A&E's, and they're from the meeting. It's like, you know, the A&E Zion. Right, or A&E Zion. I'm still mourning exactly what that means. But the African Methodist Episcopal Zion. Another A&E Zion. And it seems in my thumbery, there's some real preponderance, if you will, of A&E Zion churches. This one is an example of not only the architecture, but the role that these places play in education, because when Alabama State University moved to Montgomery, this church hosted their first graduation. They hosted a lot of very important speakers, including President McKinnon. President McKinnon. That's true. I still refer it as training to Lutheran. This is a church actually into a guest neighborhood that was casted by a white minister, and it was a black congregation. He became very active in the movement. He was Secretary of the MIA in his house. And this is the first niche that was built. Birmingham. Also known as Birmingham. The Ballet House is unique in our sites. I like them because they are committed to interpreting that story of black Birmingham prior to the movement. Birmingham is a post civil war city established in 1871. So there was a long history in Birmingham that people don't know and don't celebrate. And the Ballet House is committed to that. But also, even though it's very close to the Civil Rights District and National Monument, it's not included in it officially. It's privately owned, but again, the owners are committed to preserving it and telling the story. The Hamilton family, the Ballet family built the house. But the Hamilton family, during the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Herschel Hamilton was known as a dog by a doctor. The Kelley room part, but the demonstrations were as maybe three blocks, three or four blocks from the Ballet House. And so people who were injured during the demonstrations were brought there for him to take care of. Beth, how many of you have ever heard of Fred Schell's work? This is a student of mine. I'm kind of cheating because I'm from Birmingham. I didn't answer other questions earlier. Well, honestly, this is my opinion. Before the Birmingham Civil Rights District opened, a lot of people knew nothing about Fred Schell's work. And Fred Schell's work was the leader of the Birmingham Movement. I was described as so gracious. He was so courageous that I thought he was a little crazy. And, you know, went through being attacked by a mob when he tried to integrate a high school with his children. The parseage was bombed. The church was bombed. And somebody pointed out to me, Birmingham was an industrial place. So people had access to dynamite. Mines, meals, when you think, well, why would they bomb? Yeah. But they had access to dynamite. Sistine Street is the iconic church. How many of you have heard of Sistine Street? Tell me why. Not you, Mr. Barber. We went there on a civil rights trip in the 8th grade. So we went to Birmingham. What do you remember about Sistine Street? The window in the, I think it's like a rose window that was given by the children of from Wales. But also, I think this was a church where there was a bomb in the basement as well. And I think that was why the window was redone. Yeah. Also, on September 15, 1963, we heard of four little girls. This is the church that was bombed and four young girls were murdered. And that it was an active civil rights church. Somebody mentioned the March on Washington. What I'd like to share is if you can imagine, the March on Washington, they've never been that kind of crowd on the mall. Dr. King was eloquent. The energy was great. All races, ages were there. And it just felt like such a high point. It was in August of 1963. September 15, the plant sets a bomb, kills four girls, worshiping in the church. It was devastating. It was devastating. And drew once again local attention to this whole issue of racial segregation and the violence that accompanied it. And, you know, a lot of people repeat the quote, if you don't know your history, you're doomed to repeat it. You heard that. My position is if you don't know your history, you don't understand you're present. So if you don't know about this legacy of truly domestic terrorism and into the start ten years ago, then you don't understand some of the reaction, the concern that people have when we see similar things cropping up today that are rooted in a very similar philosophy I've got to get on with some advice. Old Sardis is another church that is just beginning to tap into its civil rights history. The Alabama Christian movement for human rights was organized there, even though Reverend Schell's work has been passed for a decade. This church sits two blocks from a Jewish cemetery. Don't ask me. And so, you know, they felt that this was safer because nobody really knew they were there, nobody, you know, St. Paul sits directly across the parking lot from 16th Street and had felt like a step child, a movement step child for years because 16th Street gets all the visitors from Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to open right across the street. They got all the visitors and nobody knew about St. Paul. St. Paul actually trained a lot of the young people who participated in the demonstrations. Selma Black Belt. If you saw the movie Selma, Grand Chapel is where the marchers left from. That's the iconic site in Selma. First color Baptist church. With first Baptist in Montgomery, first Baptist in Selma and several of the other churches grew out of white congregations that required their black congregants even worship upstairs in the bag. This is another church. It was devastated. This is an old photograph. It was devastated by a tornado. Another common challenge is that these congregations are aging and their numbers are dropping. I think first Baptist in Selma has particularly suffered from that. The woman that we work with there is a long time black preservationist champion which she reminds us of sometimes. She's been toiling a long time but her church is struggling around renovation and rehabilitation and just really how it's going to move forward. This is another privately owned property but this is the home where Dr. King and other local leaders visited and stayed during the Selma voting rights campaign and this is where King... They got a photograph of Dr. King watching Bobby Kennedy make an announcement and went to the telephone call. So this was really this home. The family history is fabulous. They have such deep roots in Selma, physician, a relative of the first hospital, the first pharmacy, all of those things. But again, it's a privately owned property. So we'll see. Tabernacle, somebody mentioned... Tabernacle is another common name that I go to a Tabernacle but it's in Birmingham. This church is so beautiful. It is so beautiful. I'm sorry, I didn't bring any interior shots but one of the things this church is famous for is this is the church with two entrances because black people were not allowed to enter and exit on this street, on this main street at Selma. So it was designed with two entrances. They're exactly the same. And that gives you a sense of the depth of the racism and segregation. The safe house is in Greensboro. I'm trying to check that out. I'm going to talk a lot about this. The safe house is in Greensboro, Alabama. The borough's family, Dr. King was working in that area. They got word that the plan had planned to assassinate him as he was trying to lead. He hid out in this home, the wood structure. He hid out there. They were able to get him out of Greensboro safely two weeks later. He was assassinated in Memphis. The Jackson family took in the SNCC workers who were there for voter registration. And this is where they stayed. And there's also a dog tribe which I've never heard of until Georgia. It's a little adjacent two-room building. Again, this is another family on property, but Mr. Jackson really values it. But what happens when something happens to Mr. Jackson? So part of our work is trying to get that next generation engaged and excited about continuing that legacy. And I'm going to go through these quickly because this is really Georgia's area. But I do want to share a little bit of what we... So you heard about the sites. We've been doing a lot of work. Documentation has been key in the J.M. Kaplan fund. It's really supported this work. Another document I said was historic preservation of radical concept. And it's radical when you are preserving the sites and the stories of people whose history has been undervalued and overlooked as is the case with African-American history. We were included in the big wave of American preservation, as long as you will. And now some funders are kind of, oh, we don't support historic preservation. And my reaction was, as soon as we go out from the door, it closes. Anyway, so it's very important to train these sites. One, convincing them that their documents are important. That's a big deal. And then helping them know how to collect. And so that's what this particular workshop was about. The oral history project that... Rachel. That we'll mention. And you know, taking out the history of this trouble. Yeah, I'm trying to recall. Look at me, the website. Okay. Okay. Yes, come to my... My name is Spun. They support us to learn oral histories. Each site picked their interviewee. So we didn't tell them who to pick. We gave them some broad criteria. And George Jett wound up stepping in and being the interviewer for most of them. And that was pure problems, because she knew the questions to ask. And having used someone else, the interviewers probably would not have been as rich or dissentant. Say that. Alabama Public Television partnered with us and did the recording. Where my name is Spun, has edited them and is launching a micro-site with all of the interviews. Again, a little rancid, but our champion connected with us with the National Park Service. I know all of you are familiar with the history of American guilty conscience. Okay. Our haves. So they sent the haves photographer to document all 20 of our sites. We didn't realize that this was the first time this equipment had been used anywhere. So if you look, the image on the left shows you the richness of what Jarrah was able to do for haves as opposed to excellent professional photography. But the haves photographs look like paintings. It's the most amazing thing that we are waiting to get on. Who's in that picture? Who's in that picture? This is Will with students from Tuskegee. We have built a partnership with Tuskegee University just started a historic preservation program in its School of Architecture. The first one in the state of Alabama. So, you know, Tuskegee is an HBCU program. Okay. And this is Jarrah. And Will. I can't really see the difference in the quality of the photographs. And we had Columbia University students in Montgomery. None of them are here, right? One. There's a question. This is a workshop we did at Tuskegee with Tuskegee University Historic Preservation and Science and Faculty. And now, I turn it over to my colleague, George Hed, right at all those questions you have in the Q&A. I'm going to be a little different because it's important for me that you understand the quietness of this. I travel over to a distant town. I could not find my mother. I could not find my father. I could not hear the drum. That comes from Derek Walcott's dream of a memory. Presidents told me about the sites in the same country. And it's extremely important that we kind of understand why it is really important to restore them and to preserve them. We must leave evidence. Evidence that we were here, that we existed, that we survived and learned and made. Evidence of the immense sense of fullness we gave each other. Evidence of who we were, who we thought we were, who we never should have been. Evidence for each other that there are other ways to live past survival, past isolation. I said before you, a survivor of the Black Southern women born, bred, and now again living and civilized. My country, our land. My memories of struggle and reassurance, hard work and reward, hope and renewal, empowerment. But people who lifted themselves out of a mild, out-of-date complacency and industrial bondage and through ideological reorientation redress the ills of previous generations. This, my people, in this country is repeat with substitutions which strip us of our history and culture. Sense of identity, pride, and the individual work. But that history did not define us as people. The work of our money was a community with a plethora of homes and black-owned businesses. And their places now stand as they want. Ghostly, ready, brilliant, of the minority act. The death row came with integration that brings us to why we're here today. It's a shared history that reflects and affects us in all myriad ways. I don't know if it seems like history belong here or not relevant to the present. I contend we need new language and to move from civil rights to sites of conscience. Connecting past struggles to today's issues and turned memory into action. Today, our valor we have conflicts with history interact versus memory remembrance. The new to remember often competes with the equally strong pressure to forget. Less intentions to turn the page after deeply divided events, erasing the past, have prevented generations from learning critical lessons and destroying opportunities to build an inclusive both and narrative. We can no longer afford to simply glorify the actions taken during the tumultuous period of insubility. Civil rights is to begin with questions of identity and membership. It moves to an understanding of the role of citizen, the fragility of democracy, the ways of prejudices and the dangers of resolving complex problems by dividing the world into us and them and then bringing them for the ills of the society. It's a history that also raises different questions of right and wrong of guilt and responsibility. The consortium sites illuminate historical political groups of democracy and their impact on citizenship and current social economic issues through a variety of lenses and lead with a commitment to community action. The narrative, meaning the most provocative work of consortium sites is reinterpreting a place called home. Multiple identifications define home, the place of criminal interior and exterior landscape. Home of lots is informed by ancestral roots, our OOTS and traveled roots are O-U-T-E-S. Blacks have experienced repetitive, coercive of evil or serial forced displacement like interruptions due to actions by vigilante groups, federal law, state as well as local government promises. Race, displacement and exploitation are the hallmark of the black experience in this country, shaping the black man's definition of home. Memory, especially in a black sense, is shaped by legacies of injustice occurring at the intersection of the subjective memory of trauma and the collected remembrances of histories of domination. Given the changes resulting from total amnesia and the elusive quality of communal memory, tackling this elephant is a daunting but daunting task. But the Alabama African-American civil rights heritage sites consortium gives us a starting point. All 20 sites or areas affected by displacement became surreal and shattered a sense of home. A gift to find home after one is forced to be given out is one of the recurring threats in considering the complexities of home. After this, Capitaine brought to the U.S. with the better part of 200 years waiting for the U.S. government to begin the process of allowing them to call America home. Even after being emancipated from slavery, they still needed an addition so they could stake a claim to the moral conscience of the country doing the civil rights movement. Throughout American history, unwelcome spaces to persons of African-American descent were designated as white spaces. White spaces were therefore home to whites where blacks and other non-whites attempting to gain entry were made to feel unwelcome, not at home, and could be accused of trespassing. It is important then that we begin to examine the issues around land, identity, economics and decisions that were made regarding people and their choice or lack of choice in relation to their displacement. This involves not only physical and geographic displacement but also the displacement of the soul. Serial forced displacement sets up a dynamic process that includes an increase in interpersonal structural violence, an inability to act in a timely fashion, to problems of threat or opportunity and a cycle of fragmentation. Each time black people in this country were displaced and began to resell a new mechanism came for to bring unrest to their souls. If you are not one of us, they face another displacement. Every displacement has brought disruption representing definitive and cultural pervasive features of the black experience. Identities have been a continually challenged and transformed by these displacements. We were cleared again to understand and recognize what the writer Charles W. Chestnut develops in his writings travel as a metaphor as he explores the tension between roots and roots. Racial issues embedded in each displacement travel is mobility and offers a potentially liberating experience but the threat of rootlessness and of deferences of community remain. While the consortium does not have all the answers we know enough to recognize that urban renewal introduced drastic changes in the U.S. urban landscape and affected the black population significantly. Residents, although not blind to problems thought their communities as vital, exciting places. They not only knew the people next door but in the next block, the next block, three streets over, etc. Yes, I must say again but we played, had a sense of belonging and felt safe. It was a neighbor with strong ties to one another. Neighbors that entered on each other in times of need as well as in times of joy. They developed social, religious and political organizations. They had businesses, workshops, grocery stores, gas stations, pharmacists, schools, shoe shops, sweet shops, etc. The importance of community to its members was heightened by the second crime citizenship the members endured in the rest of the city. Within their own communities people had a sense of pride and accomplishment. They invested in their homes and supported their businesses and many accumulated significant financial capital. In 1949 the renewal authorized the seizing of life using the powers of imminent domain. In areas deemed blightly cold word for black. It is estimated that some 600,000 black people were displaced by this program losing not only their financial investments but also their collective accomplishments weakening businesses, institutions and relationships. The community records of this serial displacement terminated by visual anti-groups and renewal and so forth has greatly contributed to black disintegration undermined individual and collective functioning and created immeasurable unrest to the soul of a king. When such violence erupts people lose their ability to control crime and criminal activity begins to feed on itself producing more disorder and communities descend into aspiring and that goes on for decades and we are seeing it more and more today. Our more perfect union is still generations it seems in the future. We are still bound by spoken and unspoken rules that make home and displacement two of the most contested arenas of black human experience. In the absence of economic preparations urban reform and global government and judicial reconciliation what can we do? What is the side to do about this serial displacement? And what is a people's soldier? Do they find songs of home? The history of forced movement of people within early states is a history informed as much by race as it is by culture as much by financial expediency as it is by moral obligation. What does one do when home is no longer the same? Consortium is not only about restoration and preservation of editances but about the soul of a people paying homage to those who had the vision the fortitude and will to build an anchor community which our sites represent. It enables us to make history work for cohesion rather than division and our current generation grow up with an accurate healthy understanding of their past and the power to engage in civil life with both to speak true to power. The biographies of existing African American builders and those demolished must be recognized, preserved and their stories told. When builders and demolish to fall down especially from too few if any no belongs. By documenting these histories we attend to the living wounds under their patchwork filled with scarves. Black life to a reconstruction in West Valley is barely a footnote in our history books or the consciousness of other Americans even blacks. The absence helped to create a unique black American narrative which emphasizes victimization quiet in our people even when it is not fully articulated or thought. It is our starting point our grid of grandparents our most articulated peace supposition for dialogue who will hear only a single story about our people we create a serious misunderstanding there is power in a single story it will create stereotypes that become definitive story and when you hear it long enough you become the story. The consortium sites are important to the healing conversation of this country because they were the heart and soul of their black communities as testament that one can rise above limited expectations and circumstances. In what were established thriving neighborhoods destroyed by a renewal highway systems refusing to be silenced holding stories of surviving in the midst of a storm and we intend to stop it. Each building's narrative is a legacy of those who built nurtured and emboldened its members and to provide the world with the opportunity to ignite the fires that stoke the markets. These consortium sites will use their own thinking close for voice to create a new inclusive narrative that communicates from which we come who we are and what we built in telling a valid story and realign ourselves to our history we will preserve structures and their stories we also preserve our soul our essence we must return in fact that which we have left behind speak of words no textbooks read historic places have powerful stories to tell but they cannot speak for themselves that is up to us growing up in my daughter love and belonging belonging to a family with a shack to my ancestors at my head today we must continue that letting us know that we are not alone that we are buried by our ancestors it is now time to understand what I want whether or not specifically deliberated that all which gives us the opportunity to not only discuss serial displacement but to transcend what has become standard boundaries of race and space and create the impact to what works for us they are real people who will aspire with the 42 the courage steadfastness clearness and leadership of Nelson Manila as well as his friends in this way we not only honor the life and living legacy of the ancestors who built but give them their right in place in history and together honor the best democratic and libertarianist traditions in ourselves we recognize recognizing that black folk were not a