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The Carter School Welcomes Congresswoman Cori Bush as Adjunct Faculty

Paul Snodgrass — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 15:47:18 +0000

The Carter School Welcomes Congresswoman Cori Bush as Adjunct Faculty Paul Snodgrass Fri, 06/03/2022 - 11:47

In This Story

This summer, Congresswoman Cori Bush will be co-teaching a graduate-level course entitled, “The Public Pedagogy of Truth and Reparations.” Congresswoman Bush is a leadings voice for racial justice and human rights and the first Black woman to represent Missouri’s 1st Congressional District. Congresswoman Bush is a nurse, Black Lives Matter activist, ordained pastor, and former childcare worker. In this course, students will hear directly from Congresswoman Bush and activist, writer, and activist-scholar Dr. David Ragland about their national work building infrastructure and support for reparations and locally-led truth telling processes and commissions in the US. Representative Bush and Dr. Ragland will walk through their experiences during the Ferguson protests and beyond, and introduce the truth processes they helped create to center the voices of community members that have been impacted by racialized forms of violence.

This course will look at the creation of interrelated mechanisms: truth telling processes, participatory critical pedagogy and reparations as political and moral practices that can help address state sponsored violence against African Americans and other targeted groups while opening space for to imagine possibilities for greater racial justice in the United States and abroad. Students will meet other practitioners working on these issues from across the country and learn about cutting-edge practices being employed to address long running issues of structural violence and systemic racism. As a result, students will gain insight into the challenges and opportunities of building grassroots initiatives that support communities directly impacted by violence and gain greater fluency and competence in engaging larger policy debates and legislation at the Federal level.

This course builds on previous efforts at the Carter School to support truth-telling and healing work in response to police violence and other forms of racial injustice. In 2014, Congresswoman Bush co-founded the Truthtelling Project (TTP) along with Dr. Ragland following the murder of Michael Brown. At that time, Congresswoman Bush and Dr. Ragland collaborated with Carter School faculty member Arthur Romano and students at the school in developing resources for hosting Truthtelling events.The Truthtelling Project model led to over 60 events nationally that impacted thousands of people and advanced national conversations about the impacts of police violence on communities across the country and the power of communities to take the lead on seeking justice. The Truthtelling Project also review a MacArthur grant for their impactful work. This course provides an opportunity for another generation of Carter School students to better understand and consider their contribution to the work of truth, reparations and reconciliation.

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Podcast - EP25: Gail Christopher on racial healing and overcoming a legacy of separation

Damian Cristodero — Fri, 14 May 2021 14:47:42 +0000

Podcast - EP25: Gail Christopher on racial healing and overcoming a legacy of separation Damian Cristodero Fri, 05/14/2021 - 10:47

In This Story

Gregory Washington

A false story has been told in this country about people of color, social change agent Gail Christopher says, and it’s time to tell the truth about the “bad idea” of the hierarchy of human value. Dr. Christopher, executive director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity and a senior scholar at ��ӽ紫ý, says racial healing includes building a belief system “that is grounded in a deep understanding of our interconnectedness and interdependence as an expanded human family.”

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Reconstructing their narratives: $300,000 DOJ grant elevates Mason’s lynching research

Mariam Aburdeineh — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 17:43:08 +0000

Reconstructing their narratives: $300,000 DOJ grant elevates Mason’s lynching research Mariam Aburdeineh Fri, 12/11/2020 - 12:43

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In This Story

Charles Chavis

Of the more than 4,000 lynchings of Black Americans that took place in the United States between 1865 and 1950, at least 43 cases occurred in Maryland.

��ӽ紫ý’s John Mitchell Jr. Program (JMJP), housed within the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, has been helping research several of these cases since 2019 to support the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In October, they received news that they will be taking their research to the next level, thanks to a $300,000 Department of Justice grant they helped secure for the commission.

Charles Chavis speaks at a dialogue on memorialization in December 2019. Photo provided.

“States, in terms of their narratives, don’t shed light on these historic traumas,” said Carter School professor Charles Chavis, who is on the board of directors for the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project. “We wanted to give life to the relatives of victims whose loved ones had been forgotten.”

The grant, which is part of the Emmett Till Cold Case Investigations Program, will allow the commission and JMJP to supercharge their research.

“We work directly with the relatives in the sentence that we identify because we believe there is a direct line that can be drawn from the racial terror and lynchings of old to the existing racial terror and anti-blackness that we continue to see manifest in 2020,” Chavis said. “[With the grant] we’re now able to hire expert genealogists to help us track down the relatives [of lynching victims] so that they can be a part of the process.”

$100,000 is set aside for the communities and families of the victims for restorative justice reform, said Chavis, who founded JMJP to address narrative change and social transformation. The rest of the funds will go toward live reconciliation-style hearings.

“We work through each individual case in the various communities with key expert witnesses, relatives, descendants bearing witness to this history,” Chavis said.

Before that happens, Chavis said the Mason team helps with forensic reconstruction, which involves leaning on existing research and records to put together a mosaic of the case.

The Maryland State Archives have been key to their efforts.

“Students have been able to work directly with the research, documenting cases, doing census data, pulling death certificates, verifying biographical data and pulling together narratives of individuals,” Chavis said.

In the process, undergraduate and graduate students are gaining hands-on activist and research experience.

“What has been most important for me is being able to put some of what I learned about narrative approaches to racial and social justice into practice,” said master’s in conflict analysis and resolution student Audrey Williams, who is one of five students supporting the commission.

She said the project has also helped her better understand her role in creating change.

“You have to recommit to confronting anti-Black racism every day,” Williams said. “What that means for people who already benefit from the system is committing, with humility, to listening to and platforming the voices of colleagues, friends, and community members who have been harmed, and to becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable. The best place for this entire process to start is in our own hallways, classrooms and relationships.”

Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution

John Mitchell Jr Program for History Justice and Race

Justice and Race

Conflict Resolution

Narrative

Black African Heritage

Black Lives Matter

undergraduate research opportunities

Undergraduate Education

Campus News

Podcast - Laurie Robinson: The Ups and Downs of Policing Since Ferguson

khanse2 — Fri, 17 Jul 2020 21:25:11 +0000

Podcast - Laurie Robinson: The Ups and Downs of Policing Since Ferguson khanse2 Fri, 07/17/2020 - 17:25

Mason professor Laurie Robinson, who during the Obama administration was co-chair of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing, explains a complicated legacy. With John Hollis.

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