Taylor Stewart is the founder of the Oregon Remembrance Project that promotes Truth and Reconciliation. They help communities in Oregon unearth stories of injustice and engage in the necessary truth telling and repair required to reconcile instances of historical harm. They connect historical racism to its present-day legacies in order to inspire contemporary racial justice action.
“We can’t change the past, but we can always change our relationship to the past” – Taylor Stewart
3 Rs to Reconciliation:
Remembrance
Repair
Redemption
He worked with the community of Coos Bay, OR for three years to commemorate Alonso Tucker, Oregon’s only documented African American victim of lynching. On June 19, 2021, a historical marker was unveiled in Coos Bay memorializing Alonzo Tucker and the thousands of other victims of lynching in this country.
His next enterprise, The Sunrise Project, is in Grants Pass, OR, a community known for a history as a Sundown Town. The goal is to rewrite the ending of the story of a Sundown Town by recognizing the past as an exclusionary community, while using that past to intentionally promote inclusivity.
No one’s story is finished. By adding new chapters to our history, we can be defined by where we are heading instead of being defined by where we’ve been.
Please view the video to learn more about Taylor Stewart’s work and how we can use nurturance toward a positive future. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.