2019 was the 400th Anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans to be sold into bondage in North America: in 1619 at Jamestown.  We called on families, organizations, neighborhoods and cities to observe the anniversary by telling their stories of oppression and resistance... and across the country, people gathered in observances large and small.
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Watch the full video of our October 20th event at Riverside Church here!
We must begin by organizing, observing, and building.
​In order to plan the observances of the anniversary in 2019, we ask people to revisit the past and learn about efforts to win freedom and equality. The history we learned in school often left out or mis-represented the story of inequality and the long people’s fight for equality.  Our Starter Kits will help get you and your team on your way.

In 2019, we called 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. Our work continues, based on what we learned from observances held across the nation.

We must all get involved.
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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.
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FINDING OUR STORIES
In 2019 we observed the 400th anniversary of the first landing of Africans at Jamestown to be sold into bondage. Such an historic moment raised the question of observance. A surprising upwelling of reflection pointed the way.   
  • Georgetown University led Universities 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.
There are many more stories that we can tell.  Every group and every place has a story, whether it is of dispossession of Native Americans, denial of rights of working people, or the exclusion of Asian Americans.  Some of the stories we need to tell and hear are stories of resistance and progress, the stories of strikes, sit-ins, elections, and sanctuary. 
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Mementos from the photo album of Annabelle Mammie Green, a granddaughter of Nearest Green. Photo by Nathan Morgan for The New York Times.
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. ​
Story: Nantes, France
We are not the only country benefiting from reflection.  On April 27th 2018, 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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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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