The Equal Justice Initiative / Community Remembrance Project partners with community coalitions to memorialize documented victims of racial violence throughout history and foster meaningful dialogue about race and justice today. The Community Soil Collection Project gathers soil at lynching sites for display in haunting exhibits bearing victims’ names. PHOTO CREDIT: Mickey Welsh / Montgomery Advertiser via USA Today Network
Thursday, July 13th will be 160 years since the New York City lynching of William Jones and others — most of whose names we may never know — in the infamous "Draft Riots." The trailblazing Colored Orphan Asylum was also looted and burned to the ground that day, although staff managed to escort its 233 children to safety.
Very few New Yorkers are aware of this most murderous civil insurrection in U.S. history, and to this day there are no commemorative markers. LEARN MORE
Destruction of the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue, NYC "Draft Riots" (NYPL)
If you are NYC-local, please write to waysofpeace.org@gmail.com for information about two commemorative walks to honor William Jones along with countless others named and unnamed. Step by step, we will bear witness to historical and current violence, as we renew our long-term commitments to justice and healing.
Wherever you are, you can join us later on this 160th anniversary for the next online interfaith cohort of
How To Move Our Money: Practicing Reparations As Spiritual Release
Six Thursdays beginning July 13th @ 7PM ET / 6PM CT / 5PM MT / 4PM PT
"It’s rare to find a space where social justice and money management converge....The workshop is supportive, insightful and inspirational, and it’s empowering to have the tools to move 'just giving' forward. I couldn’t recommend it more highly."
The powerful reparations practices of "How To Move Our Money" are equally applicable to our crises of homelessness, reproductive freedom, gun violence, mental illness, immigrant solidarity, wartime displacement and more — regardless of personal income or affluence levels.
Space is limited. TO REGISTER, PLEASE REVIEW THIS LINK AND WRITE TO waysofpeace.org@gmail.com NO LATER THAN WEDNESDAY, JULY 12TH.
NAACP flag flown from NYC headquarters until 1938 (Library of Congress, Courtesy NAACP)
