This combined issue of our newsletter will reflect upon two important pilgrimages which are a part of the ongoing efforts to create the brave spaces needed for the work of racial healing to occur. The work in the Diocese of Atlanta over the past eight years verifies the importance of pilgrimages for us.
We organized our first pilgrimage to Hayneville, Alabama by taking one bus filled with fifty-six of us from the Diocese. We went to the Jonathan Daniels Memorial Service. Our work began to be transformed by that gathering because it helped to bring together a very diverse group of folks and it created a space for conversation that would not have happened otherwise. Following that first year of traveling to Hayneville, we organized the second pilgrimage, which was the 50th anniversary of Jonathan Daniel's death. We had two full buses and many others who drove. The conversations that we convened following the second pilgrimage made it clear that we needed to move deeper into the work and we did.
We organized pilgrimages to remember Georgia’s victims of lynching. These pilgrimages began with a bus full of us traveling to Macon, Georgia and gathering with about one hundred folks who had arrived from other towns south of Atlanta, and hosting a memorial service for the seventeen people who were lynched in the middle Georgia area. We also remembered those whose names we did not know. For the following two-years, we continued by hosting another pilgrimage to Athens, Georgia where we remembered fifty-six persons who were lynched, and in the final year we held a memorial service at the Center for Racial Healing and unveiled a marker with all of the names of Georgia's lynched along with an acknowledgement of those who are unknown or whose names were missing from our research.
These combined efforts have helped to under-gird our ongoing racial healing work in many ways and they have helped us to move forward in organizing our recent Justice Pilgrimage which will be highlighted in more detail later. The Center has lent its support to the pilgrimages to Cape Coast Ghana, which is the home of our sister diocese, and continues to explore ways to connect our pilgrimages to Ghana with our work in this Diocese and the wider church.
Most of this newsletter will focus upon our pilgrimages and our call to action in regards to our sisters and brothers from Latin America and the assault upon their personhood and dignity by the inhumane policies that are being enacted against them.
We organized our first pilgrimage to Hayneville, Alabama by taking one bus filled with fifty-six of us from the Diocese. We went to the Jonathan Daniels Memorial Service. Our work began to be transformed by that gathering because it helped to bring together a very diverse group of folks and it created a space for conversation that would not have happened otherwise. Following that first year of traveling to Hayneville, we organized the second pilgrimage, which was the 50th anniversary of Jonathan Daniel's death. We had two full buses and many others who drove. The conversations that we convened following the second pilgrimage made it clear that we needed to move deeper into the work and we did.
We organized pilgrimages to remember Georgia’s victims of lynching. These pilgrimages began with a bus full of us traveling to Macon, Georgia and gathering with about one hundred folks who had arrived from other towns south of Atlanta, and hosting a memorial service for the seventeen people who were lynched in the middle Georgia area. We also remembered those whose names we did not know. For the following two-years, we continued by hosting another pilgrimage to Athens, Georgia where we remembered fifty-six persons who were lynched, and in the final year we held a memorial service at the Center for Racial Healing and unveiled a marker with all of the names of Georgia's lynched along with an acknowledgement of those who are unknown or whose names were missing from our research.
These combined efforts have helped to under-gird our ongoing racial healing work in many ways and they have helped us to move forward in organizing our recent Justice Pilgrimage which will be highlighted in more detail later. The Center has lent its support to the pilgrimages to Cape Coast Ghana, which is the home of our sister diocese, and continues to explore ways to connect our pilgrimages to Ghana with our work in this Diocese and the wider church.
Most of this newsletter will focus upon our pilgrimages and our call to action in regards to our sisters and brothers from Latin America and the assault upon their personhood and dignity by the inhumane policies that are being enacted against them.