Lee County Remembrance Project

August is here, and Carrying Memory Forward is entering its final month.

Two reasons to give this week:

🎁 Every gift of $50 or more comes with a free LCRP t-shirt — a thank-you gift you can't get anywhere else!

💵 GiveButter, our online giving platform, is matching 5% on all donations to Black-led nonprofits this month, which means your gift goes even further!

GIVE today: https://www.leecountyremembrance.org/give

And, did you catch our exciting news last week? Applications are now open for our brand new Youth Leadership Institute! If you know a 9th-12th grade student in Lee County ready to learn, lead, and carry this work forward, send them to www.leecountyremembrance.org or reach out to [email protected]

LCRP is excited to announce the first annual Youth Leadership Institute. High school students in Lee County who are interested in racial justice within our community are encouraged to apply to the first cohort. All cohort members will receive a $500 stipend for their participation! Learn more at https://www.leecountyremembrance.org/youth-leadership-institute

We started this campaign with A Seat at the Table: A Juneteenth Breakfast to Carry Memory Forward. Our thoughts that morning centered on the idea that freedom has to travel. It can't just be proclaimed — it has to be carried, person to person, generation to generation.

That star bursting across the Juneteenth flag represents a freedom that arrived late, and unevenly, and is still arriving in places today.

This is the final day of our week of reflection — but the campaign to Carry Memory Forward continues all summer. We need $9,500 to reach our goal and fund a new Youth Leadership Institute and a research booklet that will carry this work forward for years to come.

Every gift moves freedom a little further. Give today: https:www.leecountyremembrance.org/give

This courthouse has seen it all — trials that delivered justice, and moments when justice never had a chance to begin.

Buildings hold memory whether we acknowledge it or not. Our work is about making sure the stories these walls witnessed don't stay buried in silence.

Your gift this summer helps fund the research that brings those stories to light.

Make your gift today: https://www.leecountyremembrance.org/give

This is what remembrance looks like in practice: people standing together, in public, in front of a marker that tells a story our community once tried to bury.

Every gathering like this is an act of truth-telling. Every young person in that photo is someone who now carries this history forward too.

That's exactly what our Youth Leadership Institute is designed to grow — a new generation of truth-tellers.

Give today: https://www.leecountyremembrance.org/give

Samford Hall has stood at the center of Auburn for well over a century. Generations have walked past it without knowing the full history of the county it sits in.

Carrying memory forward doesn't mean tearing down what's familiar — it means telling the whole story of the places we love.

This summer, give to help us bring that history to a new generation through our new Youth Leadership Institute.

Give today: https://www.leecountyremembrance.org/give

Read those headlines again.

This is the language that was used to justify murder — printed in local papers, read at breakfast tables, treated as ordinary news. Words like this didn't just describe racial terror lynchings; they excused it.

Part of our work is going back into these archives and telling the truth about what they reveal — about our community, and about ourselves.

Our new research booklet will carry that truth further than ever.
You can help us fund its publication with your gift today.

Make your gift: https://www.leecountyremembrance.org/give

This jar holds soil gathered from the ground where Samuel Harris was lynched in 1902.

It's not just a symbol. It's the actual earth containing the blood, sweat, and tears that witnessed what happened. Soil collection is part of how communities across the country are refusing to let these stories disappear into silence.

We say his name - and John Moss, and George Hart, and Charles Humphries, and Charles Miller, and Forney Calhoun, and Otis Gray - because for too long, no one did.

Help us carry their memory forward — support LCRP's brand new Youth Leadership Institute and an updated edition of our research booklet this summer.

Give today: https://www.leecountyremembrance.org/give

Today, as the country celebrates independence, we're asking a harder question: independence for whom, and when?

Lee County's history holds both the promise of that flag and the moments we failed to live up to it. Carrying memory forward means telling the whole story — not just the comfortable parts.

This summer, we are raising $10,000 to launch a Youth Leadership Institute and publish a new edition of our research booklet. Truth-telling is how freedom actually travels.

Give today: https://www.leecountyremembrance.org/give

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