Reparative Justice: Hidden Histories will be on exhibit at the Tubman Museum August 28th through December 2023. The Museum will host a reception to celebrate this exhibition on Sunday, August 27th at 3:00 P.M. Admission to the reception is Free for Museum Members, $5.00 General Admission. Contact the Tubman Museum (478-743-8544) for more information about this exhibition and special event.
This exhibit features photographs, portraits and historical artifacts that document Wesleyan College’s work with the Mellon Foundation’s Crafting Democratic Futures Project, and involves both scholarly research on Wesleyan’s history, as well as the work of Macon community members who are preserving Macon’s multifaceted and often hidden African American histories.
The work of symbolic reparations involves making visible aspects of the past that have not been fully acknowledged, either to be properly grieved or more formally recognized through scholarly historical research. Through a series of community meetings at the Tubman Museum, on Wesleyan’s campus, and in Macon City Hall, Wesleyan’s team also worked with community members, local griots and historians to focus the work of the Macon Bicentennial Subcommittee on creating new Historic Markers on Cotton Avenue, a once-thriving African American business district, as well as the unrecognized sites of slave auctions on Poplar Street.
This family in Gray, GA (Jones County) can trace their family back to slavery are participants of the joint portrait project between Wesleyan College’s Lane Center for Social and Racial Equity and the Tubman Museum in 2022 &2023. The portraits were taken by Johnny Crawford.
Front (Left to right): Mary Emma Lawson,101 years old, and Jimmie Pitts.
Back Row (Left to Right): Bonita Pitts Jenkins, Donald Black, Janice Kitchens, Mildred Kitchens and Phyllis Kitchens Thurmond