Center launches new digital collection project: Racial Reckoning

Center launches new digital collection project: Racial Reckoning

The Center for Mason Legacies has created and launched a new digital initiative: Racial Reckoning. Racial Reckoning is a response to the mass protests across our nation and around the world following the police-involved killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Rayshard Brooks in the spring and summer of 2020. 

These events are part of a long history of racism in the United States. The end of the Civil War and American slavery did not bring equality for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Today, unarmed BIPOC encounter racist micro-aggressions and systemic racism in their everyday lives, and compared to white counterparts, are disproportionately likely to be stopped, falsely arrested, and killed by the police. 

Through the Racial Reckoning initiative we seek to collect, preserve, and present the stories, personal experiences, and digitally-born materials of protests against racism and white supremacy as experienced by members of the broader George Mason University community. As our community is widely dispersed, documenting such moments means capturing experiences that may have happened on- or off-campus, in a nearby city, or even farther away in another state 

Do you have digital photos of protest signs, the built environment, or a resource that was helpful or meaningful to you during the protests against racial injustice beginning in the spring and summer of 2020? Whatever your experience and wherever it occurred, we invite you to share as we document this ongoing story of the legacies of our nation’s founding. 

For more about the project, our collecting policies, and how you can contribute, please visit the Racial Reckoning site. You can also follow us on Twitter @racereckoning. If you have any questions, please contact us at legacies@gmu.edu.