Black Lives Matter.

June 15, 2020

Today, we commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the lynchings of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie in our city of Duluth, Minnesota. This week we also celebrate Juneteenth, which marks one hundred and fifty-five years of the end of slavery as a legal institution in the UnitedStates. And yet, racial inequality, discrimination and brutality against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color continues.

As poet Maya Angelou said it, “History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again.”

We believe that team-based service and historic preservation are powerful forces for building and transforming communities, and ways to address today’s inequities. As a service organization dedicated to the preservation of places that tell Minnesota’s stories, we must work to historicize our current moment and fight against the oppressive narratives perpetuated by our histories.

We must support our communities by moving beyond these harmful legacies through the preservation of places that center the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in Minnesota. Ultimately, we aim to assess and implement specific actions that will ensure our organization will serve, transform, preserve and honor our state’s diverse communities and lay the foundation for a more equitable, diverse, and welcoming future.

For more information about the history and legacy of the lynchings in Duluth, please explore these resources from:

The Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, Inc.
The Duluth Chapter of the NAACP
The University of Minnesota Duluth
The Minnesota Historical Society

Better history, for a better future.

Please take a look at the statements from some of our peers and partners about racial justice, our present moment, and where historic preservation and service needs to go next.

Rethos
National Trust for Historic Preservation
Conservation Corps Minnesota & Iowa
The Corps Network
Minnesota Historical Society
National Museum of African American History and Culture
National Council on Public History
Association for Preservation Technology
International Coalition of Sites of Conscience

Here are resources on the need for historic preservation efforts to preserve amplify the stories and histories of diverse communities:

Self Preservation: A Juneteenth Online Conversation About Black Historic Preservation
4 Culture: elevating equity in preservation standards and practices
International Journal of Conservation and the Built Environment, Change Over Time: emerging strategies for sustaining San Franciso’s diverse heritage
Andrea Roberts, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning (Texas A&M) presenting on “preservation apartheid” in “Curating Freedom: Making Hidden Black Publics Visible with Descendant Communities.”
Conserving the Human Environment: social justice and using heritage values to prioritize climate change decisions
“La Gloria” video (produced by the Esperanza Center) in which the destruction of Latinx heritage is described as a kind of “cultural genocide” (this is very, very powerful and sobering video)