Truth Telling About Collective Resilience with Diasporic Communities: Navigating Displacement, Erasure, and the Impacts of COVID-19

FAIN: PN-295965-24

George Mason University (Fairfax, VA 22030-4444)
Arthur Romano (Project Director: May 2023 to present)
Margarita Tadevosyan (Co Project Director: January 2024 to present)

The recovery of documentation and the organization of in-person gatherings to collect oral histories associated with the history of racial violence in Forsyth County, Ga. The oral histories would be made available online via a portal, along with an interactive map and educational materials.

This project seeks to safeguard cultural resources by recovering and documenting oral histories of the Forsyth Expulsion with the community of descendents and the wider diaspora of people impacted by this historical legacy, many of whom are now navigating the disproportionate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The racial violence directed toward the Black community in Forsyth County, Georgia, at the turn of the 20th century and in the decades following, intended to erase all evidence of a substantial and vibrant Black community life in the county. The Expulsion created a diaspora resulting in significant cultural loss for the community, including burnt and hidden property records and a disconnect from violent physical expulsion from the land they previously owned and resided on.