Witness Stones is a project employed by many schools to honor and commemorate the memory of enslaved people. Kingswood Oxford are participating in this project again, and all students in regular US history get to take part.
“Only by coming to terms with history can we free ourselves to create a more just world,” Drew Gilpin Faust said on the Witness Stones website. Mr. Faust served as Harvard’s 28th president, and this quote is from “The Universities and Slavery: Bound by History Conference” at Harvard University on March 3, 2017. According to the website, “These words embody the underlying motivation of the Witness Stones Project. In order for our communities to grow to the extent to which they reflect our ideals of justice and equality, it is essential for us to acknowledge and confront the painful times in our history when we have not lived up to those ideals. Through remembrance and reconciliation, we will be able to navigate a path toward healing and growth. It is with this in mind that the Witness Stones Project seeks to restore the history and honor the humanity and contributions of the enslaved individuals who helped build our communities.”
Witness Stones are created using cement and bronze. Upon the bronze cap, the name of the individual is engraved, along with their trade, and whether they were emancipated or died enslaved, with corresponding dates.
Each school that participates in this project is assigned an enslaved person. What is learned about the individual through student research is shared at the ceremony for the installation of the Witness Stone. It is then published in a commemorative pamphlet and archived on the Witness Stones website. Ultimately, this project hopes to become a digital library of the knowledge, and memory that is acquired through research.
History teacher Tricia Watson really enjoys this project as it is a way for students to personalize their learning. This project moves into a localized community, and our community, and shows the reality of what enslaved people faced and why their stories need to be told. “This has developed into an amazing research project as it identifies our history and what is being told about it, whose perspective the story is told from, and what is missing,” Mrs. Watson said. “Through this project, students get to generate their own ideas and be creative to symbolize and represent why the story of their enslaved person gets to be told,” she said.
The project provides articles, tools, and other resources, and students get to use them to provide agency to those who don’t have a voice.
Students have a choice of how they want to present the information, whether it may be through a video or a piece of art. This project is a physical remembrance, aiming to give people an emotional connection and is also a way to spread information positively.
History teacher Katie McCarthy also believes that this is such an important project for her students to participate in. “The goal of this project is to shift the narrative of what is the common understanding of slavery and those enslaved and to get away from our assumptions,” Mrs. McCarthy said. “Students not only get to learn about what happened to the enslaved person they research but why that is significant. Students get to draw connections to the current day and have a real role in making this history public and creating how it is shared.”
Peleg Nott is the enslaved person that KO was assigned to research; through this project, students get to look at areas of Peleg Nott’s life that were empowering. This project gives students a more realistic view of how he may have experienced freedoms as an enslaved individual. This project provides students with time to pause their learning to really take in all the information they are given to formulate their own opinions about it.
There is a focus on the resistance and agency of enslaved individuals despite all the challenges they faced. This project is a way for students to make connections, past and present, and a way to move our society and community forward – to care for others, share stories, and learn about human beings that came before us.
