Building on the success of past webinars, the Living Legacy Project offers a new three-part series, Speaking Truth: Countering Disinformation About Racial History. Expert voices will clear away the clutter and noise of reactionary rhetoric and false narratives that threaten to derail progress. We’ll clarify the past in support of present-day actions for equality, justice, and equity.

Join us as we talk about important topics filling our news cycles, so we can all speak with clarity and act with purpose to make our window of opportunity matter. Now is the time!

Save these Thursday dates: September 16, October 21, and November 18. 5:00 pm Pacific, 6:00 Mountain, 7:00 Central; and 8:00 Eastern.

Register for one, two or all three programs! All programs are free and open to the public. Registration is required and donations are appreciated. ​

Note: we recognize that our Jewish friends might be involved in Yom Kippur observations on September 16. If you have to miss any of the programs, they will be recorded and available for on-demand viewing on our YouTube channel. ​

In our June 30, 2020 program in our series Voting Rights: The Struggle Continues meet three generators of voting rights activists, Dr. Ellie Dahmer, Dr. Joyce Ladner, and Ms. Arekia Bennett. These three dynamic women will discuss the history of the voting rights struggle for African Americans, the progress, and the ongoing struggles. 
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Dr. Dahmer has been involved with civil and voting rights in Mississippi for most of her life, including serving as Election Commissioner in Forrest County, MS, in the same district where her husband was killed by the KKK for his advocacy. She held this elected position for more than a decade supported by both white and black voters.

​Dr. Ladner served as VP for Academic Affairs at Howard University from 1990-1994 as an interim President there from 1994-1995. A noted sociologist, her passion for the movement, for social justice and activism became an part of her writing, teaching, and advocacy, 

Ms. Bennett is the Executive Director of MS Votes, an organization committed to civic engagement of Mississippians across generations, cultures, identities, inequities, and struggles, with particular focus on young people. Arekia founded GIRL, a black feminist collective at JSU and has been critical in developing and nurturing a black feminist political space and policy agenda with GIRL through MS Votes' "One Girl, One Vote" initiative. 

Don't miss this exciting conversation, moderated by the Rev. Dr. Gordon Gibson. 

The program starts at 7:30 pm Eastern time on June 30th, but join us "on the bus" at 7:15 pm for our pre-show, including music by Living Legacy Project's co-president and music director, Reggie Harris.  

For more information and to register, visit http://www.uulivinglegacy.org/votingrights2.html

As the 2020 election draws near, the Living Legacy Project is offering a monthly online series focused on voting rights. In these sessions, we'll be exploring what we can learn from the Voting Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s to apply to challenges we face today in these unprecedented times.

In the first program in this series, we'll be joined by Ms. Flonzie Brown Wright and Larry Rubin.

In 1968, Ms. Flonzie Brown Wright became the first African American woman to hold a position as elected commissioner in Mississippi. In this role, she monitored elections, trained poll workers, supervised registrars, and sued the Elections Board for discriminating against black candidates and poll workers. Between 1969 and 1973, Brown Wright served as vice president of the Institute of Politics at Millsaps College, and from 1974 to 1989, she worked for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1994, she published her bestselling book, Looking Back to Move Ahead. 

Larry Ruben was a SNCC organizer in Southwest Georgia and Northern Mississippi, working to support Black Southerners who were risking their lives to exercise their right to vote. Rubin grew up in a secular Jewish household in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Rubin’s father was a welder and his mother a hairdresser. Both were active in the progressive movement. His parents instilled in him the idea that the “essence of being Jewish is the responsibility to fight for justice.” When SNCC asked white organizers to form their own projects in white communities to fight racism Rubin started organizing poor whites, then became a union organizer and communications specialist and served four terms on the Takoma Park, Maryland City Council.

Mark your calendar for 7:30 pm Eastern Time, on the last Tuesday of every month up to Election Day 2020, beginning May 26, 2020. Don't miss these important conversations! 

For more information and to register, visit: Voting Rights: The Struggle Continues. 

Please share this information on Facebook and Twitter! 

We are always pleased when members of one of our Pilgrimages finds a way to express their experiences and is willing to share those expressions. Laura Ingersol accompanied us on our October 2019 Pilgrimage and chronicled her journey through blog posts. We are sharing them here. 

To read them all, scroll to the bottom of this page: Reflections from Laura. Or jump to the places you are most interested in learning about:

• Day 1, Saturday, Birmingham, AL
• Day 2, Sunday, Birmingham, AL
• Day 3, Monday, Birmingham to Montgomery, AL
• Day 4, Tuesday, Montgomery to Selma to Marion, AL
• Day 5, Wednesday, Marion, AL to Meridian, MS
• Day 6, Thursday, Meridian to Philadelphia to Jackson, MS
• Day 7, Friday, Jackson to Money to Ruleville to Glendora, MS, to Memphis, TN
• Day 8, Saturday, Memphis, TN

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This eight-day journey starts and ends in Birmingham, Alabama, where the 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church killed four little girls, , Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. We then travel to Montgomery to visit the Equal Justice Initiatives' Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Bryan Stevenson's lynching memorial). We'll visit Marion and Selma, Alabama, the center of the Selma Voting Rights Campaign and walk over the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge. 

From there, we'll travel to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where members of the Ku Klux Klan killed three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman. We'll visit the new Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, and then head up the Mississippi Delta to the area where 14-year old Emmett Till was murdered, through Sunflower County, where Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer lived and worked, and then on into Memphis Tennessee, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated and where the National Civil Rights Museum now honors his legacy and the legacy of all who fought for civil rights. 

This Pilgrimage is a sacred journey unlike any other. Not only will you visit the historic sites of the Civil Rights Movement, but you will also meet some of the very people who risked their lives to secure everyone's rights. These foot soldiers of this Movement have not stopped working for justice, and they will inspire you with their courage, their resilience, and their persistence throughout all these many years. ​

​For more information and to register, visit October 2019 Living Legacy Pilgrimage. 

We are making plans for our next Living Legacy Pilgrimage! It will be October 19-26, 2019. Mark your calendars now!

This eight-day experience starts in Birmingham, Alabama, where the 1963 bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church killed four little girls, Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. We then travel to Montgomery to visit the Equal Justice Initiatives' Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Bryan Stevenson's lynching memorial). We'll visit Marion and Selma, Alabama, the center of the Selma Voting Rights Campaign and walk over the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge. 

From there, we'll travel to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where members of the Ku Klux Klan killed three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman. We'll visit the new Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, and then head up the Mississippi Delta to the area where 13-year old Emmett Till was murdered, through Sunflower County, where Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer lived and worked, and then on into Memphis Tennessee, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated and where the National Civil Rights Museum now honors his legacy and the legacy of all who fought for civil rights. 

This Pilgrimage is a sacred journey unlike any other. Not only will you visit the historic sites of the Civil Rights Movement, but you will also meet some of the very people who risked their lives to secure everyone's rights. These foot soldiers of this Movement have not stopped working for justice, and they will inspire you with their courage, their resilience, and their persistence throughout all these many years. 

We plan to open registration by mid-June, so stayed tuned for further announcements. 

If you're not already on our mailing list, sign up now, so you be sure to get notified when registration opens. ​