2019 will be the 400th Anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans to be sold into bondage in North America: in 1619 at Jamestown. We are calling on families, organizations, neighborhoods and cities to observe the anniversary by telling their stories of oppression and resistance.
We need desperately to link arms in radical equality.
Inequality is a threat to health and democracy. Nearly 400 years of division have created an apartheid society: we need a new social infrastructure to carry us through the challenges of climate change, decaying physical infrastructure, rapidly evolving jobs, underperforming schools, uneven access to health care and lack of affordable housing.
We need desperately to link arms in radical equality.
Inequality is a threat to health and democracy. Nearly 400 years of division have created an apartheid society: we need a new social infrastructure to carry us through the challenges of climate change, decaying physical infrastructure, rapidly evolving jobs, underperforming schools, uneven access to health care and lack of affordable housing.
The history we learned in school often left out or mis-represented the story of inequality and the long people’s fight for equality. In order to plan the observances of the anniversary in 2019, we need to revisit the past and learn about efforts to win freedom and equality. Our Starter Kit will help get you and your team on your way.
In 2019, we are calling on all Americans to commemorate the 400th anniversary of enslaved Africans first arriving in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. We believe that the system established after this defining moment codified inequality in law and custom, and that addressing this legacy of injustice is intimately connected to the struggle for rights of all oppressed people.
We want 1 million people in America to participate in observances in 2019.
WHO WE ARE
400 Years of Inequality is a coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to dismantling structural inequality and building strong, healthy communities.
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WHO WE ARE
400 Years of Inequality is a coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to dismantling structural inequality and building strong, healthy communities.
MORE
WHAT WE BELIEVE
Every community has something to contribute.
The observance you plan will reflect your local story and your values! An observance can be anything you like: a performance, an exhibit, a tree planting, a citywide potluck, a concert. We have collected some ideas and strategies for crafting an observance in our Starter Kit.
We are all in the “ecology of inequality”.
We center the experience of African-Americans and people of color, and a nationwide observance of the lasting impact of chattel slavery on American society and government is key to healing and building a just future. We also see how other forms of oppression - such as class, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, sex, and gender - layer and reinforce the ecology, depriving us of a truly free society. We are inspired by the long history of coalitions in successfully challenging inequality.
Every community has something to contribute.
The observance you plan will reflect your local story and your values! An observance can be anything you like: a performance, an exhibit, a tree planting, a citywide potluck, a concert. We have collected some ideas and strategies for crafting an observance in our Starter Kit.
We are all in the “ecology of inequality”.
We center the experience of African-Americans and people of color, and a nationwide observance of the lasting impact of chattel slavery on American society and government is key to healing and building a just future. We also see how other forms of oppression - such as class, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, sex, and gender - layer and reinforce the ecology, depriving us of a truly free society. We are inspired by the long history of coalitions in successfully challenging inequality.
Poet Bette Bland at our "Creating the Call to Observance" conference, 2018. Photo by Aubrey Murdock.
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We stand by Fannie Lou Hamer’s declaration that “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free” and Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which states “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
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FINDING OUR STORIES
In 2019, we will observe the 400th anniversary of the first landing of Africans at Jamestown, to be sold into bondage. Such an historic moment raises the question of observance. A surprising upwelling of reflection may be pointing the way.
In 2019, we will observe the 400th anniversary of the first landing of Africans at Jamestown, to be sold into bondage. Such an historic moment raises the question of observance. A surprising upwelling of reflection may be pointing the way.
- Georgetown University kicked this off by confronting its history of selling slaves to pay the bills. Other universities have followed, including Harvard, Columbia, Yale and Princeton.
- As the new museum on lynching was opening in its city, the Montgomery Advertiser examined its coverage of lynching and issued an apology.
- The New York Times examined its coverage of women in the obituary section and found a massive inequality. This is being addressed through more balanced coverage now as well as the creation and publication of obituaries that were missed, like those of Ida B. Wells, who led the fight against lynching, and Ruth Wakefield, who invented the Toll House Cookie.
- National Geographic asked a scholar to examine the approach to race in its writing and identified a racist past but also an important evolution over the past hundred years.
Mementos from the photo album of Annabelle Mammie Green, a granddaughter of Nearest Green. Photo by Nathan Morgan for The New York Times.
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Story: Lynchburg, TN
Telling local stories can have national impacts. For instance, Jack Daniel’s learned to make whiskey from Nathan “Nearest” Green, a slave. This fact has been known to people in the company and in its hometown of Lynchburg, TN. But tours of the distillery left this fact out. In 2016 the company announced that it for its 150th anniversary it would update its script. Author Fawn Weaver went to Lynchburg to learn the story, but it was not to be seen. The company had dropped the idea in the middle of the tense, 2016 Presidential election. Fawn Weaver soon became an expert on Mr. Green’s story, and through telling it, her investigations helped reinvigorate the Jack Daniel’s company and the change finally become real. In 2017 the New York Times published this piece on Weaver's work, and early this year CBS aired this article and interview. You can learn more about Nathan "Nearest" Green's life and impact from the Nearest Green Foundation. |
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Story: Nantes, France
We are not the only country benefiting from reflection. On April 27th, Emmanuel Macron, president of France, announced the creation of a foundation for the memory of slavery, to be headed by the country’s former prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault. Monsieur Ayrault was selected because of his role in leading the city of Nantes to acknowledge its participation in the slave trade, including installing a remarkable memorial to the abolition of slavery and focusing the city’s museum on telling this horrendous story. Read more about our own visit to Nantes here. |
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Ready to host a 2019 observance?
Tell us about it here so we can spread the word.
Tell us about it here so we can spread the word.
400 Years of Inequality is a coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to dismantling structural inequality and building strong, healthy communities.