The Beloved Community Project

Now is the time to build a bridge from the founders and original heroines and heroes of the African-American Freedom Movement to those who actively seek to bring that fight into the future through the crucible of today.

TheBelovedCommunity.Online can be a vital piece of that bridge.

We have the opportunity to do extensive, in depth, personal interviews with the people who were a direct part of this movement and thereby preserve their memories and present them online, in publication, and on film.

Like similar projects of historical importance, these interviews would be available for use in schools, community groups, and to the general public.

Please join us in this vitally important opportunity today:

Sign up on the Join page and participate in group forums, community audio and video projects, and the creation of this vital project.

You can also take part in a most important way by making any size donation you wish and special project reports and free gifts.

As our special thank you gift you will receive a founding supporter commemorative wristband with the words WHAT YOU DO MATTERS inscribed on the front and the website address on the back.

Looking to the past to explore a path to the future. Interviews with key figures in the African-American Freedom Movement.

WHAT’S HAPPENING
BELOVED COMMUNITY is based on the assumption that the heroes and exemplars of what came to be called the African-American Freedom Movement have much still to tell us, and to show us, in our current tumultuous time.

While many of these people have already passed from the scene, a number of people who were a part of those original struggles and who walked the line with Dr. Martin Luther King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ralph Abernathy, Diane Nash and others are still alive and still have something to tell us.

The intention of BELOVED COMMUNITY is to interview those people and gather their first person stories of those times while also asking them their views on the current situation. How do they feel things have changed? What still needs to be changed? What methods and theories from the past are still relevant today and what, as they see it, might be done anew?

The single most important aspect of these films is the attempt to interview as many of the people who were directly involved in the freedom struggle of the 50s and 60s while they are still around, and then work with the activists and organizers of today to piece together a picture of how the historical meets the contemporary.

We want to ask the two-fold question: Does the Beloved Community remain a dream, and a possibility for today and, if so, how do we learn from the past and bring the dream to fruition today?

You can be a VITAL PART of this important and amazing opportunity! Join Us and/or Donate today.

While we are building our educational resources section, we have selected a few of our favorite sites for information on the people and events that make up the vanguard of the African American Freedom Movement of the 50s and 60s.

If you have suggestions for additional resources, please feel free to write us at resources@thebelovedcommunity.online or Join Us and participate that way.

The King Center

The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute

The Legacy Museum

The National Memorial for Peace & Justice

The National Museum of African American History and Culture

Civil Rights resources from The Library of Congress

Civil Rights Leaders Who Changed History (from The Root)

The FBI’s War on Civil Rights Leaders (from The Daily Beast)

Civil Rights Martyrs (from The Southern Poverty Law Center)

20 Lesser-Known Civil Rights Figures You Need To Know About (from Best Life)

7 Women Civil Rights Leaders You Need To Know (from ONE)