COMMUNITY ENGAGED RESEARCH: PEACE & JUSTICE JAMES | ENACTING TRUTH 

Enacting Truth and 
Reconciliation Through 
Community-University 
Partnerships  
A Grassroots Approach 

ANTHONY JAMES, SIMRAN KAUR-COLBERT, HANNAH STOHRY, NYTASIA HICKS, 
VALERIE ROBINSON 

ABSTRACT 

This paper presents a grassroots model for engaging truth and reconciliation (T&R) 
for racial terror lynching in the U.S., using as a case example two lynchings that 
occurred in Oxford, Ohio. Moreover, processes used to reconcile these events are 
the result of several community-university partnerships.  

While many citizens are aware of national or macro level examples of T&R, such 
processes require state level entities to implement. Such requirements leave 
communities with little options for reconciling past atrocities. The grassroots 
approach presented in the current paper remedies this by also connecting local 
communities across the U.S. to engage in a national movement attempting to fully 
reconcile historical racial terror in absence of a federal mandate.  

Guided by the Equal Justice Initiative’s Community Remembrance Project, the 
current paper provides local coalitions a clear framework to engage in examining 
injustices that occurred in their local community during this brutal period of U.S. 
history. The aim of this paper is to provide communities with a grassroots approach 
that can be used to promote continued and sustainable T&R for racial terror 
lynchings that continue to haunt communities in contemporary times. 

Keywords: truth and reconciliation; grassroots approach; community-
university partnership 

Authors 

ANTHONY JAMES 
SIMRAN KAUR-COLBERT 
HANNAH STOHRY 
NYTASIA HICKS 
VALERIE ROBINSON 
Community-engaged 
scholars-activists at Miami 
University  

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INTRODUCTION 

…As shadows extend across Oxford 
Memorial Park, two African American 
scholars from Miami University will place 
small shovels into soil and place it into 
one of two clear, glass jars with a black lid. 
A clear plastic label is affixed to the jars. 
They were sent from Montgomery, 
Alabama, where they will be returned for 
display in a museum that honors an 
estimated 4,400 known African 
Americans who were lynched during a 
reign of terror between the mid-19th – 20th 
centuries. In white lettering, the 
labels read: Henry Corbin, Oxford, Ohio, 
January 14, 1892, and Simon Garnett, 
Oxford, Ohio, September 3, 1877. 
Remembrance ceremonies like this have 
been held across the South and Midwest 
for several years. The resting place for the 
filled, uniform jars will be the Legacy 
Museum, twin institution to the National 
Memorial for Peace and Justice in 
Montgomery (Curnutte, 2019). 

Our paper begins with a description of a soil 
collecting ceremony modeling a truth and 
reconciliation process centered on a grassroots 
approach. Moreover, we introduce and apply this 
model through a community-university 
partnership that continues to enact truth and 
reconciliation for two brutal racial terror 
lynchings that occurred in Oxford, Ohio, in the 
late 19th century. Specifically, we center writing 
this paper as an act of “facing with courage” 
(Angelou, 1994, p. 272), the “wrenching pain” 
(Angelou, 1994, p. 272) of the lynchings of Henry 
Corbin (1892) and Simon Garnett (1877), so that 
the legacy of this historical wrongdoing "need not 
be lived again" (Angelou, 1994, p. 272). 

Important in any conceptual framework guiding 
practical action process is communicatively 
establishing shared meaning with receivers 
(Jaccard & Jacoby, 2020), or in this case, those 
that will read about our model. Because formal 

truth and reconciliation has typically occurred via 
a national or macro-level approach, we share four 
cases (i.e., Germany, South Africa, South Korea, 
and Canada) that enacted truth and reconciliation 
for past atrocities that occurred in their history. 
This sets the stage for making distinctions 
between the typical macro or national approach 
and our micro or grassroots model, fueled by 
community-university partnerships. Next, we 
describe our community-engaged approach in 
Oxford, Ohio, as an ongoing process and practice; 
pedagogy and path; and project and proposition 
that we hope will engender truth and 
reconciliation from past injustices to 
contemporary problems. 

LEGACY OF RISKS: GLOBAL TRUTH 
AND RECONCILIATION MOVEMENTS 

The movement for truth and reconciliation in the 
United States (U.S.) is rooted in the tradition of 
the Black North American struggle. A struggle that 
influenced liberation movements in China, 
Ireland, Germany, India, South Africa, Korea, and 
the Philippines, and throughout Latin America 
and the Caribbean (Cone, 1999, p. xvii).   

We note that each truth and reconciliation effort 
demonstrates a very different cultural approach, 
motivation, and outcomes. The U.S. system is 
built to have the policies de-centralized and 
enacted at the micro or state levels, with local 
representatives deciding how to enact change, as 
determined by political processes they deem 
appropriate (e.g., democratic). The U.S. has also 
historically maintained moral superiority and 
enforcing compliance in other countries while 
neglecting acknowledgment of its own 
wrongdoings, even within the U.S. This is true 
despite the efforts of the National Coalition of 
Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA, 
n.d.), the long-standing works of Representative

Truth and reconciliation is possible in 
every context and can be inspired by our 

interconnection with other nations that 
are doing this work. 

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John Conyers and colleagues introducing bill H.R. 
40 Commission to Study and Develop Reparation 
Proposals for African-Americans Act (Congress, 
n.d.). This bill recognizes the harm done by the
slave trade, slave labor, and racial terror lynchings 
toward People of Color, in concert with other 
nations operating under the guise of a global 
oppressive hegemonic structure. Nonetheless, the 
work of this group is inspired by intentional 
macro-level efforts of truth and reconciliation in 
other countries, who attempted to reconcile 
aspects of their hegemonic oppressive pasts. 

Many other countries have faced the responsibility 
and weight of historically significant atrocities, 
forcing them to address reconciliation via national 
movements or efforts. Each country demonstrates 
that the nature of such events has not only been 
unique to each country, but the approaches have 
also had distinct methods of addressing those 
atrocities. This paper utilizes the four 
international cases (Canada, South Africa, 
Germany, and South Korea) to broadly 
demonstrate the uniqueness of Truth and 
Reconciliation Commissions, the global 
interconnections, and the diversity of macro-level 
approaches to addressing national events of 
terror. Each case is historically contextual and 
complex and cannot be fully fleshed out in this 
paper, so they are provided to demonstrate the 
potential for the U.S.'s ability to enact truth and 
reconciliation, albeit in other ways. 

Canada Case 

For over 150 years, residential schools operated in 
Canada, and over 150,000 Aboriginal children 
attended these schools, with many never 
returning to their homeland. The central goals of 
Canada's Aboriginal policy were to eliminate 
Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; 
terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of 
assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to 
exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, 
and racial entities in Canada. The establishment 
and operation of residential schools were a central 
element of this policy, which can best be described 

as "cultural genocide" (Truth and Reconciliation 
Commission of Canada [TRC], 2015). Canada 
engaged in cultural genocide by destroying the 
political and social institutions of Aboriginal 
people. In 2009, the TRC of Canada began a 
multi-year process to listen to Survivors, 
communities, and others affected by the 
Residential School system. 

Appeals to the South African Truth and 
Reconciliation Commission (TRC) haunts most 
post-1990s institutional attempts to address 
historical injustice (Grey & James, 2016, p. 303), 
including that of Canada's. Comparing Canada 
and South Africa, Nagy (2012) notes that loose 
comparisons have hampered the application of 
important lessons from the South African to the 
Canadian TRC—namely, the discovery that 
narrow approaches to truth collude with 
superficial views of reconciliation that deny 
continuities of violence.  

The TRC of Canada (2015) discusses their 
approach to "reconciliation" in the context of 
Indian residential schools as comparable to a 
situation of family violence (p. 118). It is about 
coming to terms with events of the past in a 
manner that overcomes conflict and establishes a 
respectful and healthy relationship among people 
going forward. For the TRC of Canada, 
"reconciliation" is about establishing and 
maintaining a mutually respectful relationship 
between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in 
Canada. And the Commission states that for that 
to happen, there has to be awareness of the past, 
acknowledgment of the harm that has been 
inflicted, atonement for the causes, and action to 
change behavior.  

South Africa Case 

 In 1948, when several countries were attempting 
to dismantle the effects of racism, the social 
system of apartheid (act of discrimination where 
persons are separated by class, race, economic 
status) was being implemented in South Africa. 
After a severe economic downturn caused by 
World War II and The Great Depression, the 

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South African government saw fit to integrate 
racial segregation into policy. The implementation 
of discriminatory practices and race-baiting 
policies cruelly targeted darker skin complexions, 
where Black people were viewed as less equal than 
white people. The hierarchical nature of South 
Africa's racial discriminatory social system, where 
the white minority ruled, had the most severe 
effect on persons of African descent. The policies 
prohibited activities such as interracial marriages 
while creating race-based designated employment 
and segregated neighborhoods. During apartheid, 
women of African descent were among the most 
restricted as race and gender were influential 
(Grey & James, 2016). For example, apartheid 
excluded Black women from paid labor and 
viewed them as free employment. Additionally, 
Black women were isolated from Black men and 
forced to work in houses as well as in the field 
(Grey & James, 2016).  

In response to the struggle over apartheid in 
South Africa, South Africa's Truth and 
Reconciliation Commission was created. The goal 
of the Commission was to "promote national unity 
and reconciliation in a spirit of understanding 
which transcends the conflicts and divisions of the 
past" (Preamble, 1995). The Commission largely 
focused its efforts on amnesty, where persons are 
forgiven for political offenses by the government, 
for criminals of apartheid. Criminals who came 
forward and admitted to violating human rights in 
the struggle for apartheid were granted amnesty. 
The effect of amnesty led to a traumatic transition 
through South Africa, but also a solution 
considered morally legitimate by citizens.  

The South African Truth and Reconciliation 
process is often referred to as one of the most 
successful models of truth and reconciliation 
(Ibhawoh, 2016). Today, reconciliation scholars 
view South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation 
process as a universal paradigm or model. For 
example, the model was adopted by the Indian 
Residential School of Truth and Reconciliation 
Commission in Canada as well as The Vienna 
Declaration of Crime and Justice (Ibhawoh, 

2016). The adoption of South Africa's TRC process 
supported domestic and international legitimacy 
of restorative processes. However, under the 
domestic and international adoption of South 
Africa's TRC process, truth regarding the 
experiences of Black women under apartheid 
remains overlooked (Grey & James, 2016).  

Germany Case 

German history is most well-known for World 
War II (world conquest efforts and imperialism) 
and the Holocaust (genocide of Jews, People of 
Color, people with disabilities, non-Aryan peoples, 
and many innocent victims). The Nuremberg 
Trials, formed by the Allied Powers, indicted Nazi 
officials and the United Nations "passed a 
resolution in 1946 making the crime of genocide 
punishable under international law" 
(History.com, 2018). The Study Commission for 
Working Through the History and the 
Consequences of the SED Dictatorship in 
Germany was tasked with investigating and 
documenting "human rights abuses, and to assess 
the politico-historic, economic, ideological, and 
society factors of the dictatorship as well as the 
misuse of environmental resources" (United 
States Institute of Peace, 1992).  

Germany established another Commission in 1995 
"because all of the topics could not be dealt with in 
one period of legislature" (USIP, 1992). The 1992 
Commission recommended "national holidays, 
memorials, documentation centers, and mapping 
of government buildings used by SED 
institutions…[and] the establishment of a 
permanent independent foundation for follow-up 
on the recommendations" while the 1995 
Commission succeeded in establishing "a 
permanent foundation...to take symbolic and 
restorative measures" (USIP, 1992), modeling and 
inspiring other countries to participate in 
accountability measures to addressing national 
atrocities.  

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South Korea Case 

In the case of South Korea, a Truth and 
Reconciliation Commission was established in 
2000 (modeled after the South African TRC) 
(Kim, 2013) and then expanded by law in 2005 in 
order to address "Japanese colonialism, the 
partition of the Peninsula, and decades-long 
anticommunist dictatorships" (United States 
Institute of Peace, 2012), also addressing civilians 
killed in the Korean War. The Commission found 
a total of 1,733 cases; however, they only issued 
1,679 recommendations, including 1,461 cases of 
massacres, 162 cases opposing Korean 
independence, and 56 human rights violations 
cases (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 
Republic of Korea, 2005). They provided 
recommendations including "a policy of 
memorialization, by organizing events, 
establishing historical records and monuments, 
and furthering peace education" (USIP, 2012) and 
recommended the creation of laws for victims to 
receive reparations.  

Other Commissions even influenced the S. Korean 
government to implement recommendations from 
those efforts, including presidential apologies (for 
state violence) toward victims and families. On a 
more specific note, the Korean Council for Justice 
and Remembrance for the Issues of Military 
Sexual Slavery by Japan (일본군성노예제 
문제해결을 정의기억연대) makes demands of the 
S. Korean government and demands toward the
Japanese government, a movement to educate
and restore justice for the sexually enslaved
women, many of whom are no longer living
(Korean Council, 2020). This movement elicits
national and international support; on a
contemporary note, U.S. politicians even find
themselves involved in asking Japan for
reparations toward the sexual victims of Japanese
imperialism and colonization of S. Korea.

S. Korea and Germany have also collaborated as
nations, not only to learn from each other's truth
and reconciliation efforts that were mentioned
above, but to even address reconciliation for their

own geopolitical relations (e.g., Korean guest 
workers in Germany) and inner-Korean countries' 
reunification (Federal Foreign Office, 2020). 
Truth and reconciliation is possible in every 
context and can be inspired by our 
interconnection with other nations that are doing 
this work. 

A GRASSROOTS APPROACH TO TRUTH 
AND RECONCILIATION 

The previous international cases show various, 
but reasonably well defined, models for national 
action to atone for past atrocities. The elements in 
each (e.g., acknowledgment of past atrocity, 
validation of the pain to victims, engagement of 
community events to symbolize remorse, etc.) are 
key pieces of the puzzle to reconciling the past 
acts. Thus, it is imperative that grassroots efforts 
also incorporate into their models such practices 
for them to be sanctioned as legitimate acts of 
reconciliation by citizens, especially those who are 
victimized by the heinous acts. As the Greensboro 
Truth and Community Reconciliation (GTRC) 
project shows, in absence of a government-
sponsored mandate to reconcile past atrocities, a 
grassroots approach is ideal for engaging in 
"research and community outreach by taking 
private statements, holding public hearings, and 
conducting documentary research" to reach 
similar reconciliatory ends (Williams, 2009, p. 
145). To be sure, the examples listed above would 
land on the spectrum of fully government-
sponsored, whereas the GTRC model would be 
entirely on the community-based approach. Our 
model is between the two, as we are starting as 
fully grassroots but working with government 
entities to manifest truth and reconciliation.  

We are not arguing that engaging in this 
process will be a panacea for racial tensions. 
Rather, we argue that this process puts into 

place a public standard for what is and is not 
appropriate, a standard that clearly was not in 

place during the period of these racial terror 
lynchings. 

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The model advanced in the current paper 
incorporates these elements, but through 
grassroots coalition building. Moreover, the 
current model uses a community-university 
partnership to advance efforts and galvanize 
resources to help communities address evils of the 
past. As more communities learn of racial terror 
lynching in their own past, this model serves as a 
guide for approaching truth and reconciliation in 
absence of national action. 

Our model aligns with the work of the Equal 
Justice Initiative (EJI; Montgomery, AL), which 
has taken the lead on documenting the many 
cases of racial terror lynchings that occurred in 
the U.S. from the end of the Civil War to the mid-
20th century. EJI encourages local communities to 
engage in systematic community remembrance 
activities that allow for bringing awareness to the 
cases and allowing communities to reconcile that 
past (Equal Justice Initiative, 2017; n.d.). We 
juxtapose our micro-level or grassroots model of 
truth and reconciliation against international 
approaches. We conceptualize our praxis for truth 
and reconciliation as one that joins a legacy of 
risks taken by those who came before us and those 
who will come after us toward collective re-
existence (Walsh & Mignolo, 2018). Lastly, we 
offer our interpretations of the social and political 
implications of organizing for truth and 
reconciliation. 

OVERVIEW OF THE COMMUNITY-
UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIP 

Community-university partnerships can take 
many forms or structures because both sides 
encompass many components. The partnership 
for the local Oxford Truth & Reconciliation project 
includes a university faculty member representing 
one academic unit, a staff member from the 
university's graduate school, and thirteen students 
representing three academic units (College of Arts 
and Sciences, College of Creative Arts, and College 
of Education, Health and Society). Those 
community members are a subset of a broader 
university coalition that includes: faculty 

members from other academic units, the Office of 
Institutional Diversity & Inclusion, and the Office 
of Global Initiatives. On the geographically-bound 
community side, coalition partners included 
members of the Oxford City Council, the local 
Unitarian Universalist church, the Smith Library 
of Regional History, the Oxford Community 
Relations and Review Commission, the local 
NAACP, the former and current Oxford Mayor, 
and residents whose families resided in the area 
over several generations. Finally, this partnership 
includes the formation of a relationship with a 
direct descendant Chris Corbin of one of the 
lynching victims profiled in this project (i.e., 
Henry Corbin).  

Partnerships can have many meanings, and need 
specificity of the components included in the 
partnership. The structure of the partnership 
profiled in this paper included a one-credit hour 
study away course offered at the university, 
funding from three academic units to provide 
expenses for faculty and students to travel to 
Montgomery, AL during the spring break, and 
approval from the city to conduct a soil 
remembrance ceremony (Equal Justice Initiative, 
2017). It also included a preliminary approval 
from the city to erect a historical marker profiling 
the lynchings, research help from the Smith 
Library of Regional History, and participation in 
ceremonies from local religious leaders. 

The partnership connected key university and 
community stakeholders to advance the efforts of 
the project. In this case, this included obtaining 
buy-in from multiple university stakeholders. One 
example of this included securing funding from 
multiple deans and multiple units on campus, 
which allowed the course to be offered and for the 
students and faculty to travel to Montgomery, AL 
to connect with EJI and visit their museum and 
monument. Another critical connection was 
determining which institutional employees had 
key leadership positions in the city government 
(i.e., the city mayor was a faculty member at the 
institution and the previous mayor was the dean 
for a major unit on campus). Each of these 

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individuals were able to advise the project on how 
to move the work forward through bureaucratic 
steps in the city council. Lastly, the current vice 
president of institutional diversity & inclusion 
invited the new city mayor to serve on a major 
university task force examining issues of diversity, 
equity, and inclusion. This non-exhaustive step 
assured that the efforts of the truth and 
reconciliation coalition were part of the 
conversation between key community-university 
state holders. This process facilitated 
opportunities to continually move the work 
forward in absence of a government-sponsored 
mandate for reconciling these past atrocities.  

CONCEPTUALIZING CONCEPTS 

Essential in any theoretical or practical model is 
to clearly define the concepts embedded in the 
model (Jaccard & Jacoby, 2020; Klein & White, 
2015). The major concepts in our model include 
truth, reconciliation, and grassroots approach. In 
this model, truth is defined as bringing awareness 
to a historical event. Specifically, events that 
distorted or muted the voices, or truths, of 
marginalized members of a given context. This 
particular conceptualization helps validate the 
narratives of those historically marginalized by 
more powerful members of society. By validation, 
this can also mean that additional narratives are 
or have components that are just as accurate as 
prevailing narratives. To be sure, our 
conceptualization is not necessarily designed to 
determine 100% accuracy of a given narrative. 
Across the many instances of racial terror 
lynchings, there is a wide spectrum of narratives 
for many of the cases, and actual or objective truth 
is somewhere on that spectrum. However, in a 
process of truth and reconciliation, there must be 
a mechanism for acknowledging narratives that 
have historically been silenced or ignored. 
Through the acknowledgment of those narratives, 
there may be an increased chance of getting closer 
to an accurate account of the actual events that 
took place. 

Reconciliation in this model is conceptualized as 
public atonement of a past event by an official 
element of the offending party. Important in this 
model is that in a given event, there may be 
multiple offending parties. As it relates to racial 
terror lynchings, multiple entities were culpable 
for, or complicit in, the lynchings that took place 
in the U.S. between the period of Reconstruction 
and the end of World War II (Equal Justice 
Initiative, 2017). Specifically, law enforcement 
officers that did not always protect Black citizens 
from mob attacks, ordinary White citizens seeking 
vigilante justice, community members attending 
public lynching, people posed in pictures next to 
brutalized Black bodies, lawmakers who did little 
to construct laws that protected Black citizens 
from racial terror attacks, individuals who 
accused Black residents of crimes that resulted in 
racial terror lynchings, etc. This minor list pales 
compared to the many levels of culpable parties 
responsible for the 4,000+ documented racial 
terror lynchings that took place during this period 
of U.S. history. We offer several caveats to this 
conceptualization of reconciliation.  

First, we suggest a process approach that allows 
for multiple layers of atonement to occur so that 
the process of reconciliation can promote healing 
over time and take a non-linear form. To be sure, 
having state officials (e.g., city, county, state) 
engage in formal recognitions (e.g., resolutions, 
public ceremonies, historical markers) can serve 
as a standard that sparks the process of 
reconciliation. Secondly, such processes may take 
place long after the lives or presence of the 
individuals, families, and communities directly 
impacted by the racial terror lynchings. However, 
the amount of elapsed time should not be an 
excuse for ignoring and/or neglecting to reconcile 
this past. Rather, we propose that engaging in this 
process helps prevent such events from occurring 
in the future (Stevenson, 2014; Taylor, 2015). 
Third, it would be naïve to suggest that atonement 
at all of these levels of context is required for 
reconciliation to occur. However, having officials 
in positions of power engage in a process of 
atonement sets a moral and ethical standard for 

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behaviors that are not accepted; in this case, 
terrorizing vulnerable communities. Fourth, 
though it would be hopeful that all members of a 
given community would offer buy-in for the 
reconciliatory act, this may not be a reality. The 
seemingly annual vandalizing of race-based 
historical markers in the United States (U.S.) 
American South -e.g., Emmitt Till marker was 
replaced due to being repeatedly vandalized 
(Associated Press, 2019)- serves as reconciliation 
processes that can take place without the full 
support of a given community. Similarly, we are 
not arguing that engaging in this process will be a 
panacea for racial tensions. Rather, we argue that 
this process puts into place a public standard for 
what is and is not appropriate, a standard that 
clearly was not in place during the period of these 
racial terror lynchings. It is also a movement to 
ensure that we recognize and acknowledge this 
aspect of U.S. history and we never forget racial 
terror lynchings, its lingering impact, and serves 
as a deterrent in that society never allows such 
instances to happen again. 

Atoning for past atrocities is not new. In fact, 
since humans have walked the earth, there have 
been bloody conflicts due to the limited resources 
available to meet the needs and desires of all 
human beings (Sowell, 2007). For many of these 
atrocities, state entities have engaged in macro-
level truth and reconciliation to atone for such 
past events as a mechanism for healing and 
bringing peace to a given geographic area (we 
discuss these later in this paper). However, our 
approach differs from those macro-level 
approaches to truth and reconciliation in that we 
are using a grassroots approach. By grassroots, 
we mean a coalition of local citizens engaged in 
the process of bringing public awareness and 
atonement to past events. We apply the model 
here by examining racial terror lynchings in 
Oxford.  

DESIRED OUTCOMES OF 
RECONCILING RACIAL TERROR 
LYNCHINGS  

Our approach to grassroots truth and 

reconciliation is not fully original. In fact, our 
desired outcomes are derived from a model based 
on the suggested practices outlined by the Equal 
Justice Initiative (EJI; 2017). Their founder and 
director, Bryan Stevenson, started down this path 
through engaging in social justice work in 
Montgomery, AL. He notes in his TED Talk 
(Stevenson, 2012) that on a trip to Germany, he 
was amazed at the number of historical markers 
he passed that profiled the atrocities of the Jewish 
Holocaust. However, in his own country, he was 
appalled at the number of Confederate markers in 
Montgomery, which represent a powerful message 
about the pride in pre-Civil war values, and the 
lack of markers profiling the many racial terror 
lynching tied to that period in U.S. history. This 
sparked his work to build a memorial and museum 
in Montgomery to provide a more balanced (or 
accurate) narrative for this period of U.S. history. 
This led to the research which found that many 
more racial terror lynching occurred from years 
1870 – 1950 than had previously been reported. 
Because he was ambivalent that the U.S. would 
engage in a macro approach to reconciling this 
past, he offered a pathway for communities to 
engage in this process through local coalitions 
(EJI, n.d.). 

We have learned through our work here in Oxford 
(OH) that as people become more aware of their 
county's history of racial terror lynching, many 
desire to engage in the truth and reconciliation 
process. However, they are unsure of the steps in 
this process. This project includes specific 
components that allow local communities to 
actively engage in truth and reconciliation, specific 
to their local context. First, we discuss the desired 
outcomes of our local project using components 
from the model suggested by the EJI model. Then, 
we discuss the subsequent progress of our efforts 
in realizing truth and reconciliation. 

Building a Diverse Coalition 

The first desired outcome in the process calls for 
building a diverse coalition that allows community

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 members (not geographically bound) to have a 
role in the process. This desired diverse coalition 
of community members would include Faculty, 
University Administrators, Historians/Librarians, 
officials elected to local office, descendants of 
victims of racial terror lynching, and faith leaders. 
Our local project began with two faculty members 
interested in providing an opportunity to teach a 
graduate-level study away course on truth and 
reconciliation for Spring break. Their desire to 
include campus leaders involved administrators 
accepting invitations to engage with and support 
both faculty and graduate students. Of note, 
several graduate students of the coalition were 
and are also residents of the local community. 
Faculty and graduate students then reached out to 
local historians/librarians about events in Oxford 
to learn more about the circumstances 
surrounding the lynchings of Henry Corbett 
(1892) and Simeon Garnett (1877).  Librarians 
helped compile primary documents (e.g., local 
news articles) related to the two lynchings that 
occurred, providing us with necessary materials to 
review the historical context surrounding those 
involved with the racial terror lynching events. 

The authors of this paper identify as diverse 
community members who are invested in the 
historic and restorative nature of this 
reconciliation project for Oxford (OH), inspired by 
Chinese-American activist, Grace Lee Boggs, who 
in her reflection on sustainable activism writes, 
"We need to embrace the idea that we are the 
leaders we've been looking for,” (2012, p.159). We 
also connected with geographically local 
community members. Two faculty members of 
our university, but also members of the 
community, joined us on our trip to visit the 
Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace 
and Justice (Montgomery, AL). Forging 
relationships with other faculty members with 
whom you share a traveling/learning experience 
opened up opportunities to connect with the 
community. Engaging outside the classroom and 
in the community allowed for more opportunities 

to build trusting community-university 
partnerships and having meaningful 
conversations about racial justice. Additionally, 
community members also allowed us to connect to 
the local Historic and Architectural Preservation 
Commission. This partnership led two team 
members (students) to attend a public city 
meeting and share information about the course 
content, travel to the National Memorial for Truth 
and Reconciliation in Alabama, and support the 
local efforts to recognize the impact of the racial 
terror lynching that occurred in the local 
community. 

Engaging Library Historians as 
Community Gatekeepers 

The second desired outcome in the process 
involved engaging library historians as 
community gatekeepers who might support 
faculty and graduate students with advancing the 
truth and reconciliation process. Librarians served 
as historians who joined the student-faculty 
coalition by supporting research of primary source 
evidence and archival documents about the local 
racial terror lynchings. This expanding coalition 
would compile documentation of the racial terror 
lynching. The librarians collaborated with other 
library systems across the country to retrieve the 
historical documents from archives. This level of 
engagement from librarians built a sense of 
coalition work amongst the now three parties of 
faculty, students, and librarians. Students were 
able to ask for the librarians' assistance with 
locating files, understanding archived newspaper 
articles, and navigating library systems for 
detailed personal searches about the lynchings. 
Indeed, reading through the stories also gave 
historical context of the culture at the time, and 
the ways in which narratives were (un)told, and 

For both approaches –national and 
grassroots– to truth and reconciliation, the 

process must start with honest conversations 
and engagement with impacted communities. 

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from whose perspective. All of this must be 
considered in the process of uncovering truth in 
order to understand the need for reconciliation. In 
addition to helping provide these documents, the 
librarians also served as gatekeepers into the 
community as they linked the two faculty 
members and students with residents of the local 
town whose families date back to the time of the 
lynchings. These members met with the coalition 
to give more history about the nature of the 
relationship between the town and its Black 
residents. 

Connecting with Descendants of Racial 
Terror Lynching Victims 

The third desired outcome is connecting with the 
descendants of victims of racial terror lynching. 
This outcome was a result of the efforts of faculty, 
student, and librarian research. Connecting with a 
descendant of one of the individuals who was 
lynched allowed us to fulfill the component in our 
model of allowing individuals and families directly 
impacted by the event to possibly start the process 
of closure. Additionally, in the current situation, 
this also allowed the family to finally have their 
accounts of events to be heard and considered. 
The descendant also visited our class to give a 
guest lecture on how this event impacted their 
family over time. 

Engaging with Local City-Elected Officials 
and Faith Leaders 

The fourth desired outcome was to engage off-
campus community leaders, including elected 
public officials and faith leaders. This diverse 
coalition invited the mayor of the city that houses 
the university as a guest speaker to the graduate 
course. The class was able to share information 
with the mayor about the project, but also the 
local lynchings. In turn, the mayor shared 
information about how to engage the city in 
efforts to approve elements of the soil 
remembrance ceremony and eventually erect a 
historical marker on city property. Collaborations 
with the city are ongoing as they are the key 
stakeholder in erecting a historical marker in the 

city that memorializes these events. 
Representatives of the city have met with the local 
librarians and recommended locations in the city 
where the marker can be erected that provides 
visibility and recognition of this history. Through 
this, a few of the Commission members attended 
our local soil remembrance ceremony. As a result 
of exposure to the local Police Community 
Relations and Review Commission (PCRRC), one 
of the two students who shared the local efforts at 
a public meeting applied and was accepted as a 
Commission member, where PCRRC 
responsibilities include building relationships, 
taking community complaints and improving local 
policing. During the soil remembrance ceremony, 
a pastor of the local African Methodist Episcopal 
Church conducted the opening and closing 
prayers. Through rapport-building with other 
members, the student found out that one of the 
Commission members (and their life partner) 
made their own trip to Montgomery, AL, after 
hearing about the local truth and reconciliation 
efforts at that public meeting. We share this to 
demonstrate that this is what we mean by 
grassroots movement-building. 

Furthermore, the leaders of the local Unitarian 
Universalist church read about the activities of the 
coalition in the local newspaper and reached out 
to the faculty members to gain more knowledge 
about the project. This resulted in two members of 
the team visiting a gathering by the church and 
speaking with them about ways to collaborate in 
the future to support truth and reconciliation. One 
specific suggestion by members was to donate 
funds to help future members make the trip to 
Montgomery to visit the EJI museum and 
monument.   

Communicating Efforts to the Public via 
Local News Media 

Our fifth desired outcome involved successfully 
engaging with a journalist who profiled the stories 
in a national newspaper outlet, the Cincinnati 
Enquirer. The news media has the power to share 
stories in larger platforms, and to provide 

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visibility and outreach. This provided an 
opportunity to expand the network of coalition 
partners, but also spread the story to a wider 
audience. Getting buy-in was, and will continue to 
be, a crucial part of being able to engage in the 
process at multiple levels of society (e.g., local, 
state). Furthermore, the University also dedicated 
a webpage highlighting the efforts towards local 
truth and reconciliation (Miami University, n.d.). 

SUBSEQUENT OUTCOMES OF TRUTH 
AND RECONCILIATION ACTIVITIES 

Beyond building a coalition, several steps are 
outlined in the EJI model regarding engaging the 
community in truth and reconciliation. In the 
previous section, we outlined the desired 
outcomes of building a diverse coalition, engaging 
librarians as community gatekeepers, connecting 
with descendants of racial terror lynching victims, 
communicating efforts to the public via news 
media, and engaging local elected officials. In this 
section, we will share the progress we made since 
we first set out to remember the lives of those who 
were lynched in the local community.  

Determining location of events 

First, we were able to unearth these narratives and 
provide families and communities with the first 
step of healing the harm that had been done. To 
assist communities with this step, the Equal 
Justice Initiative encouraged local coalitions to 
contact them and engage in ceremonies that 
helped initiate the process of truth and 
reconciliation. In their landmark report "Lynching 
in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial 
Terror," the EJI (2017) identified more than 
4,000 documented lynchings that were carried 
out from 1877-1950. Using public documents, 
newspaper reports, personal histories, family oral 
traditions, etc., the Equal Justice Initiative was 
able to approximate nearly exact locations of 
where most of these lynchings took place. 
Importantly, the results of this study included 800 
more lynchings than had been counted in previous 
reports. 

Soil collection ceremony 

Second, gathering soil and engaging community 
members in contributing soil to the same jar to 
send to EJI unites communities in the shared pain 
and reverence for the lives that have been lost due 
to racial terror lynching. This ritual allows 
communities to bear witness to their legacies and 
demonstrate connection. Additionally, 
considering the locations of many of the lynchings 
(e.g., rural areas), it could be that the same soil 
still holds the DNA remnants of individuals 
terrorized in those locations some 70 - 170 years 
earlier. Equal Justice Initiative's community 
remembrance project of gathering soil from the 
site of lynchings establishes "relationships to the 
universe, to the landscape and to stones, rocks, 
insects and other things, seen and unseen," and 
that this notion of reconciliation is a difficult one 
for Western systems of knowledge to deal with or 
accept (Tuhiwai-Smith, 2012, p. 78).  

Erecting historical markers 

Third, as of fall 2020 the coalition is completing 
the necessary paperwork for local city elected 
officials to review and approve the erection of 
historical markers for truth and reconciliation. 
This phase is the apex of the model in that it 
institutionalizes a memorial of lynching victims, 
through grassroots approaches. Because the 
efforts are centralized through EJI, markers have 
shared design and text to help create a movement 
of truth and reconciliation that can occur over 
time in multiple locations. A major point of the 
process is to create dialogue about this period of 
U.S. history while also allowing communities to 
atone for the racial terror inflicted on 
communities of color throughout the land for 
nearly 100 years. The markers serve as a 
springboard for facing this past and creating 
opportunities to prevent such acts from occurring 
again in the future. 

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SUSTAINING GRASSROOTS 
APPROACHES TO TRUTH AND 
RECONCILIATION 

In conclusion, this particular method of truth and 
reconciliation fuels a national movement. It is a 
"bottom-up" approach that allows separate 
communities, via coalition teams, to 
independently progress through truth and 
reconciliation at a pace that is appropriate to their 
local area. For our project, our coalition utilized a 
community-university partnership. Because it is 
connected to the broader EJI approach, though 
we have some independence and unique aspects 
to our approach, we are also connected with a 
broader truth and reconciliation movement. We 
also are creating a model that can be repeated in 
other places that need additional resources to help 
with coalition building. We have conceptualized 
truth and reconciliation by blending what we have 
learned, others' conceptualizations, and our 
experiences working on truth and reconciliation 
efforts through our graduate course. Examining 
four international cases (Canada, South Africa, 
Germany, and S. Korea) has shown that it is 
absolutely possible for countries to demonstrate 
national efforts to address macro-level terrors. 

We note that truth and reconciliation is an 
ongoing process and not an outcome. 
Additionally, it is a process that includes both 
macro (e.g., national) and micro (e.g., grassroots) 
approaches. So, what would be some indicators 
that we are ensuring progression in the process 
and not stagnation across these approaches?  

For both approaches –national and grassroots– to 
truth and reconciliation, the process must start 
with honest conversations and engagement with 
impacted communities. Example cases from 
national approaches above were able to ignite this 
process with the resources of state entities. 
However, in grassroots approaches, multiple 
sparks are needed to ignite a broader discussion 
across a given community. For our community-
university partnership, this included creating a  

study away course that impelled students to reach 
out to community stakeholders to engage 
coalition building around the topic (e.g., 
conversations with local librarians). 

More formal steps are also needed to create 
sustainability in the movement. The EJI has 
included a mechanism for engaging students in 
the process via an essay contest (Equal Justice 
Initiative, 2017). This is a step that is included in 
the process of erecting historical markers, for 
which our local efforts are just beginning. 
Students are encouraged to learn about the 
events, reflect on their thoughts and feelings, and 
submit an essay to the local coalition. Winners are 
rewarded with a monetary award that goes 
towards their college expenses. This aspect of the 
process includes local schools in, and adjacent to, 
the local communities where the lynching(s) took 
place. Including schools in the process adds 
another coalition member and creates an 
opportunity to broaden the discussion to future 
generations. Finally, awardees read their essay at 
the unveiling ceremonies of the markers.  

Key to this process is the ability to obtain buy-in 
from key community stakeholders, with the intent 
of engaging and contributing. Our process used a 
community–university approach because the 
resources of the university have a wide reach that 
creates a certain level of respectability and 
validation to the project. Engaging communities 
whose current members were not directly 
responsible for the past events creates a 
significant barrier to starting the conversation 
and continuing it. However, partnerships with key 
community stakeholders (i.e., university) help 
ease buy-in and promote coalition building.  

We hope that the model we have chosen to 
implement can guide other communities wanting 
and needing to start this process. The model can 
be used to promote continued and sustainable 
truth and reconciliation for racial terror lynchings 
that created modes of interaction that continue to 
haunt communities in contemporary times.  

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