The East Marshall Street Well Project

The East Marshall Street Well Project at Virginia Commonwealth University addresses the discovery of human remains and artifacts from the 19th century found in an abandoned well on the MCV Campus in 1994. The project aims to ensure the remains, primarily of African descent, receive appropriate study, memorialization, and reburial, reflecting the dignity they were denied in life and death.

Speakers

Dr. Carmen F. Foster serves as a member of the Family Representative Council for the East Marshall Street Well Project and co-chairs the Memorialization and Interment Committee. As an organizational and leadership development consultant, she weaves public history, public theology, the study of leadership and organizational systems as a seasoned coach and guide for senior executives, mid-level managers, and next generation leaders. She holds over thirty-five years of professional experience in local, state, and federal sectors and in private and public universities. Dr. Foster earned her doctorate in education from the University of Virginia, master’s degrees in public administration from Harvard University and in communication from Clarion University. She holds a certificate in public theology from Union Presbyterian Seminary and is a proud undergraduate VCU alumna. Her family roots span the eras of enslavement, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and civil rights. As she continues her family’s storytelling tradition as a public historian. She considers herself an “ancestor-in-training” as a proud grandmother of a 9-year-old grandson, Xavier.

Stephanie Smith is a native Richmonder, who grew up under Jim Crow and attended segregated schools until she enrolled in John Marshall High School in 1963.  She was one of the earliest black students to attend John Marshall and graduated in 1967.  She obtained a Sociology degree from Virginia State (College) University in 1971. Stephanie is an Insurance Market Examiner for the Virginia Bureau of Insurance.  There she regulates insurance companies by researching complaints her office receives from consumers regarding their health and life insurance claims.   She and her co-workers have gotten claims paid for many Virginians and enforced state insurance law and insurance policy provisions. Stephanie became a member of the East Marshall Street Well Project’s Family Representative Council (FRC) at its inception in 2015.  This work is important to her, and she looks forward to the day the Ancestors found in the well are interred respectfully in their final resting place. That is her goal.

Finding Ceremony

Finding Ceremony is a descendant community-controlled reparationist process, restoring the lineages of care, reverence and spiritual memory to the work of caring for our dead. At present, our group is focused on identifying individuals whose remains were stolen by a prolific race scientist in the 19th century. These remains are still held by the Penn Museum today where they continue to generate revenue for the institution as a research and teaching collection. The purpose of our descendant community group is to advocate on behalf of these individuals in the way that family members would; and to help them find ceremony and rest. More information about our work can be found at findingceremony.com.

Speakers

Jazmin Benton (she/her/hers) is a Philadelphia-based art historian and cultural worker. Her work is primarily focused on Blackness, memory, and conversations through time. Throughout her career she has worked in museums, archives, galleries, and libraries and finds joy in researching in community with others. Her professional work has included training others in building their own archives, assisting artists in archival research, and curating exhibitions blending history and contemporary art. As a scholar, she holds degrees in Art History and Museum Studies as well as Visual Studies. She is a member of Finding Ceremony's Black Philadelphians Descendant Community Group as well as the archival research team.

Sacharja (suh-car-juh) (he/they) was born and raised on Canarsie Land (co-called Brooklyn, New York). In undergrad at Hamilton College, they began thinking expansively about who they claim as ancestors while engaging with the archival legacies of many fellow Black queer people through multimedia poetry and scholarship. After doing extensive Education Studies work at Hamilton and graduating from there in 2019 with a B.A. in Africana Studies, they moved to Lenapehoking (so-called Philadelphia) in 2022 to pursue their master’s degree in Literacy Studies at Penn’s Graduate School of Education. In 2023, they joined the Black Philadelphians Descendant Community Group after learning about Penn Museum’s violence against Black Philadelphians’ ancestral remains. Around that same time, they also became an organizing member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement’s Philly Chapter. As a scholar, educator, poet, and organizer, Sacharja’s work centers archives, ancestral veneration, critical memory, adult literacy development, accessibility, and political education. They focus on how Black people’s expansive relationships to space, place, home, literacy, and education serve as pedagogical tools in liberation struggle. To develop strategies around using these tools, Sacharja teaches at The Free Library of Philadelphia, The Community College of Philadelphia, and College Unbound.

Alex Wilson (they/he/she) is a Philadelphia-based sociologist and artist, with extensive experience in public health programming, harm reduction, and community engagement. Their favorite pastime is analyzing intersections of space and time and how they pertain to art, storytelling, and lived cultural experience. With a background in psychology and a passion for dismantling barriers to equitable healthcare. They think extensively about what it means to be a good neighbor and what it means to do right by the people they are in community with. Originally from the nation's capital, they find it important to fight for the legacy of Philadelphians as a transplant. Alex’s work is grounded in anti-racism and anti-oppression frameworks, ensuring that Black people, whether alive or dead, receive justice. They joined the Philadelphia Black Philadelphia Descendants Community after stumbling across an introductory meeting of their walking through their neighborhood.

The Descendants of Enslaved Communities at UVA

The Descendants of Enslaved Communities at UVA serves as the collective voice all descendants of enslaved and free Black communities who labored at the University of Virginia through intensive research, education, and preservation. Its mission is to research and reclaim the narrative, to honor the legacies of enslaved and free Black communities and their descendants, and to achieve restorative justice for communities rooted at the University of Virginia and surrounding regions.

Speakers

Jessica Harris currently serves as the board president of the Descendants of Enslaved Communities at UVA ((DEC-UVA). Jessica's work is situated at the intersection of education, community, and arts. A native of the Charlottesville area, Jess holds a Master’s in Educational Psychology from the University of Virginia, where she also earned an Interdisciplinary B.A in arts nonprofit management & education. She is currently pursuing a doctorate of education focused on out-of-school learning from the University of Pittsburgh. Her role at the Equity Center is focused on supporting the Community Research team on community-embedded research and community projects. She has been published in arts journal Arts Praxis, the American Alliance of Museums, and other publications. Jessica is also the founder and Artistic Director of Empowered Players, a local arts education nonprofit dedicated to uplifting the human spirit through access to arts education.

DeTeasa Brown Gathers is a Founding Co-chair of the Descendants of Enslaved Communities at the University of Virginia (DEC-UVA) and now serves on the DEC Board Executive Committee.  She is a native of Charlottesville and is a long-term employee of the University of Virginia and First Baptist Church - West Main. She is a wife, a mother, and a grandmother, and loves her entire family. DeTeasa's love for Ancestry escalated in the past few years while serving on the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers Community Engagement Committee (MEL-CEC). After learning that the Memorial to Enslaved Labors designed a dash for each of the 4,000 Ancestors, it became necessary to locate additional descendants and create a community of their voices and oral histories for 'We all should know who we are...'. DeTeasa also serves her community as a tour guide discussing the MEL and Downtown Charlottesville.  She supports Beloved Community Charlottesville and is an Advisor for the Birth Sisters of Charlottesville and the Perkin's House.