We formed an online work group in January 2022 to meet 1-2x per month online as part of a grant supported by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University, “Reckoning and Justice: Art, Historical Memory and Commemoration.” Learn more about FHI Working Groups >>

By Spring 2024, our group generated this toolkit to support community activists and stakeholders, historians, preservationists, academics, scholars, artists, architects, and others who want to participate in community-based and community-driven memory work. Those who want to illuminate silenced, undervalued, devalued, and erased histories. It is especially intended for those directly connected to this history. These people determine what memories to share, and how to share them. It is also for people who work with history and want a more informed archive, research repository, or more complete context for a historical event.

We hope this toolkit will help impacted people (re)gain trust and set the stage for conversations about doing memory work on their terms.

Who are we? We are memory workers. We have many backgrounds. Some of us are architects, artists, archivists, oral historians, scholars, and social activists working in communities, colleges, universities, research facilities, and libraries and archives. We live in the United States and are each impacted by the indifference, historical perspective, and continued systemic intent to silence, misinterpret, and erase the histories of people viewed as marginal.

We welcome feedback to our collective:

Reckoning and Justice booklet cover: photo of candle flame under title
Go To Toolkit