Project 1619 and American Evolution 2019

Project1619.org is a Hampton and Norfolk Virginia local effort to reclaim historical truth of the arrival of the first Africans to the English "new world." Featured on Idea Stations' Virginia Currents, https://vimeo.com/channels/digitalfruitsnax/214858814

(producer, videographer, editor: Shanika Metta, and videographer, editor: Nate Liebold). "A trip to the library propelled Calvin Pearson on a more than 20 year journey that would reshape history lessons. With a degree in architectural engineering technology, Calvin happened-upon a book that challenged what many of us were taught in school, that the first Africans in America landed in Jamestown. Calvin's decades of research and the "Project 1619" organization led to the Re-designation of the first landing of Africans in America to what is now Fort Monroe in Hampton. Project 1619 holds an annual ceremony to commemorate our "Egun" which means "ancestors". For more information visit PROJECT1619.org." Much as the Pequots of Massachussetts had to force the false history of Plymouth Rock into the truth of massacres and white supremacist

The Commonwealth of Virginia, however, has put its energies and resources into this 400th anniversary framework: American Evolution 2019. http://www.americanevolution2019.com/ This state and corporate sponsored multi-year extravaganza seeks to get its arms around the messaging potential, both fraught and celebratory, of America's violent and contradictory history. Describing the evolution in four themes, as well as its multiple struggles to achieve its imperial and oligarchical aims, domestically and abroad, agricultural and industrial, financial and territorial, individualistic and collective.

http://www.vafest.org/