In the years before Emancipation, Warren County ranked as one of the wealthiest counties in North Carolina. This wealth relied entirely on the forced labor of enslaved African Americans, who maintained the county’s thriving plantation economy. After Freedom, white residents did everything in their power to keep the structures of slavery alive, instituting a regime of Jim Crow governance that lasted for another century. That regime is still starkly evident across the region, manifested in persistent inequities in health care, education, law enforcement, child welfare, and wealth.

The Legacies of Enslavement panel will begin by drawing on the recorded testimonies of women and men who grew up enslaved in Warren County. From there, the conversation will step towards the present, exploring the systemic legacies of enslavement and how they continue to shape present-day experience. The discussion’s conclusion, in turn, will point decisively to the future, inviting participants to join the journey beyond enslavement and Jim Crow, and towards personal, social, and political transformation in Warren County.

Panel Moderator: Blair Kelley – Incoming Director of the Center for the Study of the American South, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Assoc. Professor of History, NCSU
Panelists:
• William Munn – Senior Policy Analyst, Health Advocacy Project, North Carolina Justice Center
• Michael Williams – Education Project Manager, National Humanities Center
• Carlton Wilson – Dean of the College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, North Carolina Central University

The “Liberating Futures” series is a collaborative project of The 1921 Project, the Warren County Branch of the NAACP, the Warren County African American Historical Collective, UNC’s Descendants Project, and UNC’s Humanities for the Public Good Initiative.

The discussion series begins this Saturday (May 14th) at 11am at the Warren County Memorial Library.
This event is free and open to the public.

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