Looking for a way to meet more Alexandrians who care about social and racial justice issues? Hungry for some meaty discussions? Then attend the Alexandria Community Remembrance Project’s Tables of Conscience fundraisers. These book/issue themed dinner parties will raise money for scholarships in the names of Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas, lynched in Alexandria in 1897 and 1899, while building relationships across communities. The dinners, hosted in the homes of members of ACRP, will provide an opportunity to discuss a social justice themed book while getting to know fellow ACRP members better. Choose the dinner based on the book you wish to read and discuss! Please indicate at registration if you have any food allergies or strong preferences. Hosts will do their best to accommodate guests requests.

Nov. 4  So you want to talk about race, by Ljeoma Oluo (ai-jee-ow-muh ow-loo-ow) This book helps readers better understand the deep roots of racism in our culture and provides advice for having effective conversations. Feminista Jones, author of Reclaiming Our Space, said Oluo has created a “conversational guide and laid out a movement-building blueprint for people of all races who are invested in self-assessment, open to being challenged, and committed to collective progress.”

Nov. 11 Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940, by Grace Elizabeth Hale In this book, UVA Historian Grace Elizabeth Hale explores how white people reacted to Black freedom (decades after the end of the Civil War) by creating a culture of separation based on false notions of race and hierarchy. This period of time, during Jim Crow’s reign, is of particular interest to ACRP because it provides context for the time in which Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas were lynched. Hale shows how the southern creation of modern “whiteness” spread across the nation in the 1920s. Good Reads states, “By showing the recent historical “making” of contemporary American whiteness and by examining how the culture of segregation, in all its murderous contradictions, was lived, Hale makes it possible to imagine a future outside it. Her vision holds out the difficult promise of a truly democratic American identity whose possibilities are no longer limited and disfigured by race.”

Get Back to the Counter, Seven Lessons From Civil Rights Icon Joan Trumpauer Mulholland (trump-power), by Loki Mulholland Don’t call her an ally, because Joan Mulholland was an activist through and through. By the time she was 23 years old, Mulholland had participated in more than 50 sit-ins and demonstrations. “It was when white people were beaten that other white people began to care about civil rights,” her son, Loki Mulholland told ACRP. Mulholland’s image from the Jackson Woolworth’s sit-in – the most diverse sit-in ever – struck the nation. Loki has distilled this and other experiences into seven core principles that can be applied both to the fight for a better world and for personal growth.