Good morning! They're doing work in my apt, so I'll mostly be using chat.

Hi! My name is Maria Russell, I manage the K-12 Education team at the Missouri History Museum.

Fixing my AC!

Good morning from St. Louis, MO. I work at the Museum at the Missouri Botanical Garden

Morning everyone! I’m Shona, currently working with CAM

sure! Commonwealth Association of Museums

Good morning from Santiago, Chile, working in the Museum of Memory and Human Rights

I used to intern at Healing Through Remembering at Belfast, and have joined in on some webinars since then

Hi! I'm Nicole! I'm working at Women's Rights National Historical Park in upstate New York.

Good morning everyone, thanks for joining. My name is Camila, and I am the Communications Assistant at the Coalition. =)

We're having an on-going virtual conversation called "How DId We Get Here?" about racism and anti-blackness in St Louis. Last week the focus was on black neighborhoods that have been destroyed--not a joyful topic. But one of the things that came up was how these neighborhoods were close and friendly communities. And people started talking about groups that meet up as reunions who lived or grew up in those communities and they come together joyously to remember what was good and to continue their relationships with each other.

I really love that thought, Shona, about how joy gives strength and hope.

I am also thinking about an online project where they are collecting all of the advertisements that showed up in newspapers after the official end of slavery in the United States. These were people looking for family members that they had been separated from and it is powerful and painful to read--but there are occasionally ones where people put up in the newspaper notices celebrating that they had found someone, that they were hosting a long-lost family member for dinner etc. And seeing those is always both a moment of relief to how much pain is represented--in some ways, it stops an encroaching numbness for me. And it lets me feel the sorrow more thoroughly?

https://informationwanted.org/

Thanks for sharing that, Maria.

Thank you!

Thank you all for a wonderful discussion!

Thank you!