Following the leadership of our partnering organization, NAARC, the first rounds of contributions will be dedicated to Point 9 in the 10-Point Plan: Preserving Black Sacred Sites and Monuments.

Monuments and memorials create physical and spatial statements about who and what we value from our past and look to honor into the future. “Who” is honored in granite and bronze tells a story of which individuals should be treated as a model and a hero, and subsequently which individuals should be left out of the story. “What” we create space for and devote restoration or construction funding toward sends a message about which people and groups should be able to hold physical and cultural space in our national identity.

The achievements, struggles, and everyday existence of African Americans are severely under-represented in our historical sites, memorials, and monuments. As we as a nation continue to reckon with many of our problematic monuments and what should replace them, FFRN! is fully committed to honoring Black heroes and stories. Moving forward, we will work with NAARC and community organizations to identify projects and channel funding and resources toward the identification, construction, and restoration of new ways and spaces to honor Black lives.

These Black Sacred Sites and Monuments must be preserved as permanent memorials to continuously inform and inspire future generations of people of African descent about this legacy of trials, tribulations and triumph and to remind America of the White supremacist terror employed to obstruct the path to freedom of African Americans.

The struggle for freedom, dignity, self-determination and community/national development is a saga of a people in a strange land resisting, surviving, maintaining families, building institutions and creating a future in the face of unspeakable oppression, exploitation, terror and violence. All across this land there are slave quarters, hundreds of sites where Black people were lynched, and locales where Black towns and institutions were destroyed. But, there are also Black burial grounds, Black towns, e.g. Nicodumus, Kansas, Mt. Bayou, Mississippi, houses of worship, meeting halls, one-room schools and other significant institutions that speak to the triumphant quest of a determined people to create a new African community in this hostile land.

One such important place, Elaine, Arkansas, illustrates this kind terror. From September 30 - October 1, in the Red Summer of 1919, White mobs attacked, tortured, and massacred hundreds of innocent African Americans, leaving a wound in the soul of the families of this Black community which has yet to be healed. This event is one of the most deadly incidents of racial violence in US history, and yet, few Americans are familiar with this historical chapter. Click here to learn more about the story of Elaine, AR, and be sure and check out our newest projects at the top of the page!