Five years ago, Pastor Michelle Thomas was looking for a place to build a church in Loudoun County, which borders the Potomac River in northern Virginia. She had no idea her search would lead her to a neglected burial ground for enslaved people, nor that her
Statues of Junipero Serra, the 18th-century Franciscan missionary who symbolizes to many an imperial conquest that enslaved Native Americans, were toppled in multiple California cities earlier this year. Now, many Indigenous leaders, artists, and activists across the state are contemplating what comes next.
The 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ voyage to Plymouth will be celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic. But until recently, the more troubling aspects to Plymouth and its founding document, the Mayflower Compact, went ignored.
The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 was deadly but not altogether noteworthy to many Baptists, historians say. Read full piece
A Maryland religious institution has pledged to create a $1 million fund for programs benefitting the Black community in an effort to make reparations for its role in slavery and racial injustice. Read full piece
Four years into an ongoing research effort, officially called the “Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project,” about 70 people have been identified so far, who, between 1823 and 1865, were mainly forced to work at St. Louis University, its church, and St. Stanislaus Seminary. Read full
A private eastern Iowa college has announced it will remove a statue of the school’s founder after officials there learned new details about his slave-owning past. Read full piece
On Sept. 1, 1920, a French general, Henri Gouraud, stood on the porch of a Beirut palace surrounded by local politicians and religious leaders and declared the State of Greater Lebanon — the precursor of the modern state of Lebanon. A century later, the mood could
Some Vermont religious leaders are asking the state to confront its role as a location where Black people were once held as slaves and remember those individuals — like Lavinia and Francis Parker, a mother and son enslaved by Ethan Allen’s daughter Lucy Caroline Allen Hitchcock.
An experimental archeologist and the creator of the Xbox are teaming up to recreate ancient Egyptian breads. Read full piece