About STAR

Mission

S.T.A.R. responds to requests from communities with histories of lynching and other communal forms of racial and ethnic violence.

S.T.A.R. partners with communities to adapt the truth and reconciliation process to local needs, on the premise that truth-telling and acknowledgement by all stakeholders must precede healing, reconciliation, and justice for the entire community.

History

When Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who chaired the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, left his visiting professorship at Emory University, he challenged the United States to address its history of racial violence with an effort equivalent to that of the South African process. Following the culmination of the "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America" exhibit at the Martin Luther King National Historic site, a joint venture with Emory University, momentum built around Tutu's charge. S.T.A.R. was founded in 2003 as a response to Tutu's challenge.

The grim and violent images of lynched bodies surrounded by white onlookers were a reminder of the spectacle nature of lynching in the late 19th and early 20th century, and a testament to the complicity of entire communities that was necessary for such lynchings to occur. The exhibition of these images in Atlanta was controversial, no doubt because they were a stark reminder of a shameful part of our collective American history.

The exhibit itself provided insight into the particular challenges that Southern Truth and Reconciliation (S.T.A.R.) would face in addressing histories of racial and ethnic violence in American communities. Unlike in South Africa, or other nations around the world, the truth and reconciliation processes in the United States are unlikely to occur within the lifetimes of those who experienced, witnessed, participated, or were directly affected by the violence.

When we consider that many of the lynching photographs and postcards from the exhibit were found hidden in desk drawers and attics, we come to terms with one of the most critical steps in the reconciliation process: uncovering and sharing openly a painful past that has been buried or lost to historical memory. Through these images of public murders, we gain a sense of the community-wide conspiracies--often dependent upon the complicity of judges and law enforcement officials--that were necessary to protect perpetrators from justice, and we begin to glimpse the depths of racial terrorism.

The trauma that communities and individuals suffer under such circumstances is extremely debilitating, and it resurfaces in future generations if it is not acknowledged and given sufficient attention. STAR is about helping communities to "dig up the past," but with the intention of helping these communities journey through conflict as a means to becoming more inclusive, whole, and functional. However, truth and reconciliation efforts in the United States currently lack certain tools utilized by efforts in other parts of the world. Specifically, efforts in the United States lack a state-sanctioned mandate. This means that truth and reconciliation processes would be unable to offer amnesty as an incentive for those who testify, and that a truth and reconciliation commission would lack "teeth," including search and seizure powers.

Although trials of human rights violators and other forms of retributive justice have been an aspect or an outcome of truth and reconciliation processes internationally, conceptions and practices of restorative justice have been explored. Retributive justice focuses on specific crimes and their impact on identifiable victims and perpetrators. Restorative justice, on the other hand, addresses the causes and effects of racial and ethnic violence on an entire community by: (1) analyzing and incorporating the collective needs of diverse groups in the community, (2) documenting human rights issues beyond the acts of perpetrators alone, and (3) promoting community -wide reconciliation. STAR enables local groups to restore honor and integrity to the entire community in the quest for restorative justice.

STAR does not oppose the prosecution of perpetrators. However, STAR does advocate for, and educate communities about, a menu of programs and processes that may contribute to restorative justice and community building. The fact that truth and reconciliation efforts are occurring at the grassroots level in the United States may in some sense be a blessing in disguise. Although a truth and reconciliation model has not been developed yet, investment in truth-telling and community building may lead to sustainable changes where we live, work, and play.

Defining Moment

Can truth commissions resolve some of the most challenging and intractable justice issues in the United States? How do we address both historical and contemporary issues at this vantage point in our national and southern experience? What can we learn from truth commissions about managing our failures in democracy with as much skill and care as we bring to our successes?

In recent years new opportunities have emerged for making truth-speaking and reconciliation initiatives a national standard for addressing human rights issues. We no longer need wait for the unusual circumstances that led President Clinton in 1998, for example, to make official apology and order reparations to Japanese Americans for their unconstitutional confinement in detention camps in WWII. Ongoing forums can more readily make each group's issue the nation's issue, and redress can become an expected and norm-defining feature of civic life.

In the South particular connections between history and contemporary human rights are vivid and inescapable. In Spring 2002, for example, an exhibition of souvenir lynching postcards opened at Atlanta's Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. "Without Sanctuary" documented lynching as a domestic form of terrorism in southern communities. But also highlighted were the efforts of the anti-lynching movement, and the eventual success of multiracial coalitions to reduce racial terror across the contemporary South.

Still more stations on the road to justice await us before we reach a fully satisfying destination. Toward that millennial goal STAR shines yet another light on the road: the legacy of truth commissions from South America and East Asia to Eastern Europe and South Africa.

Statement of Intent

To "connect-the-dots" between past human rights abuses and current affairs so that observers and participants see the direct relationship between truth-speaking about the past and reconciliation in the present.

To use truth-speaking, story-telling, dialogue, education, reconciliation, policy recommendations, and other public resources, in order to process incidents of racial and ethnic violence in local communities of the South.

To help design and implement truth and reconciliation forums for community organizations, academic groups, governmental agencies, and civic groups including faith communities.

To develop models not only for such forums, but also for a variety of programs, events, activities, and ways of facilitating conversation that communities may use to acknowledge the past and to have meaningful dialogue about present day issues.

To develop a "menu of options" from which constituent communities might discover and develop their own ideas for community-building events, programs and activities to promote restorative justice, healing, and dialogue.

Board

Matthew Bersagel Braley is a Ph.D. student in the Ethics & Society Program at Emory University. He holds an M.A. in Religion & Theology from United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities and a B.A. in Africana Studies and English from Luther College. He has served a variety of organizations as a youth program director. He currently serves as a research fellow for S.T.A.R.

Meridith Gould has a BA in Sociology with a specilization in race and ethnic relations and MS in Dispute Resolution and is a Doctoral Candidate (ABD) in Conflict Analysis and Resolution. She is an adjunct professor at Emory Univeristy in Violence Studies, at Spelman College in Conflict Resolution and at Southern Tech in Global Issues. She is a mediator, diversity and conflict resolution trainer. She serves as a member and board member of many communtiy organizations. Her professional experience is in public policy, politics, lobbying and community building.

Catherine "Cappy" Harmon has 22 years of leadership experience with Eastman Kodak Company and 10 years of leadership experience working in non-profits. The combination of her work in both corporate and nonprofit organizations provides her with both the business background and social service skills required to lead prejudice reduction and conflict resolution work. Cappy is willing to take risks and make mistakes, which is essential to building close relationships within and across group lines.

Jesse Harris Bathrick has worked over 25 years as a psychotherapist, trainer, consultant, and dialogue coach facilitating healing, communication and peaceful relationship. Currently she is finishing a Post Graduate certificate in Cross Cultural Conflict Transformation from the School for International Training with an emphasis in creating community dialogue and reconciliation.

Rich Rusk, taught school, built houses and founded a weekly newspaper in Alaska, then moved to Georgia five miles from the Moore's Ford Bridge, scene of the "Monroe Massacre," where two African American couples were killed by a lynch mob in 1946. In 1997, Rich helped found a multiracial group of Georgians, the Moore's Ford Memorial Committee, to tell this story, commemorate the Dorseys and Malcoms and work for social justice and racial healing. A Cornell graduate, as secretary of the MFMC, Rich hopes that STAR will help hundreds of communities in the U.S. revisit and deal with their own legacies of racial violence.

Dr. Andrew M. Sheldon, President of Sheldon Associates, a trial consulting firm in Atlanta, Georgia, holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and a law degree. He was actively involved in the retrials of civil rights cases from the 1960's, picking the juries in 6 of those cases, all of which resulted in convictions. Dr. Sheldon is a founder of Southern Truth and Reconciliation and sits on S.T.A.R.'s Board of Directors.

Rev. Dr. Theophus "Thee" Smith, Professor of Religion at Emory University, his academic and teaching specialties include philosophy of religion, African American religious studies, liberation theology, and religion and violence. He received the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence for his book "Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America" (Oxford, 1994), and is co-editor with Mark Wallace (Swarthmore) of "Curing Violence: Essays on Rene Girard," (Polebridge, 1994). From 1991-98 Professor Smith was the founding director of the Atlanta Chapter of the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI), an international consulting and training organization based in Washington, D.C. that specializes in diversity training, prejudice reduction, and intergroup conflict resolution. Professor Smith has recently convened Thurman Reconciliation Initiatives (TRI), a new research and consulting partnership that provides "faith-based resources for conflict transformation and social change." Professor Smith is also a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta and co-convener of the Atlanta Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians(UBE).

Anthony Tadduni, is a native of Brooklyn, New York and a graduate of Emory University. He has been involved in community service and social justice work since he moved to Atlanta six years ago. Anthony facilitated public dialogues in conjunction with the "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America" exhibit at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, and he is a member of the Atlanta chapter of the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI).

Hon. Susan Tate, is a native of Monroe, Georgia. She graduated with a B.A. in political science from the University of Georgia in 1972 and earned a J.D. from the University. After graduating from law school, Judge Tate served as Assistant Regional Counsel and Deputy Regional Counsel for the U.S. Department of Energy, Southeast Region. She practiced law in Athens for fourteen years prior to her election as Probate Judge of Athens/Clarke County, and took office in January of 1997. Active in various community non-profit organizations, she is the mother of two University of Georgia students who have taught her how being a parent is the highest calling to which a person can aspire. Judge Tate enjoys reading, lively discussion, swimming, hiking, camping, and travel.

Advisory Board

Daniel Duster

Dr. Robert Franklin

Dr. Franklin, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Social Ethics at Emory University, is a scholar-preacher and insightful educator as well as a former seminary program administrator and foundation executive. He has served on the faculties of his alma maters, the University of Chicago and Harvard University Divinity schools, and at Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, and Emory University's Candler School of Theology where he gained a national reputation as director of Black Church Studies. He then assumed the presidency of the ITC, and served as program officer at the Ford Foundation where he had primary responsibility for grants to African American churches engaged in secular social service delivery, and for advising the president of the foundation about future funding for religion and public life. His major fields of study include social ethics, psychology, and African American religion.

Dr. Franklin's personal and professional life embody a passionate commitment to core social institutions in service to the African American, as well as the wider, community.

Sherrilyn Ifill, J.D.:
Professor Ifill is nationally recognized as an advocate in the areas of civil rights, voting rights, judicial diversity and judicial decision-making. She is currently a co-instructor with Professor Michael Pinard in the Reentry of Ex-Offenders Clinic, and teaches a Special Topic Seminar in Reparations, Reconstruction and Resolution of Justice. Professor Ifill writes about judicial diversity and decision-making, as well as racial violence and reconciliation efforts. She is currently writing a book about lynching in Maryland entitled, A Conversation On Race: Truth, Reconciliation and Lynching on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Her article, "Creating a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Lynching" was published in August 2003 in the Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality. Professor Ifill also continues to litigate and consult on cases on behalf of low-income and minority communities. In July 2004, the Maryland Court of Appeals returned a decision in favor of her clients in a case protesting the construction of a landfill in a historic African-American community in Harford County (Maryland Reclamation Associates v. Harford County, MD, et al. 382 Md. 348 (2004)).

Prior to joining the Faculty in 1993, Professor Ifill served as an Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. in New York, where she litigated voting rights cases. She has also served as of counsel to the Law Offices of Peter G. Angelos in its class action representation of plaintiffs suing tobacco companies.

Professor Ifill is a frequent guest on The Marc Steiner Show, a public affairs program on WYPR, the Baltimore NPR affiliate, where she talks about race and the law, and her op-ed articles often appear in the Baltimore Sun and the AFRO-American newspapers. As a voting rights expert, Professor Ifill appeared regularly on BET News with Ed Gordon during the November 2000 presidential election battle. She has also given presentations on law and diversity at numerous conferences and symposia, including the 2002 American Bar Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, the 2003 Minority Access, Inc. 4th Annual Conference in Washington, DC and the 2004 Maryland Association of Boards of Education Annual Meeting in Ocean City, MD.

Professor Ifill serves on the board of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Open Society Institute in Baltimore and the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore City. She is a member and Co-Director of the Children's Choir at Mt. Calvary African Methodist Episcopal Church in Towson, Maryland.

Charles Lester, J.D.:
Charles Lester is a partner at the law firm Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan and has nearly 20 years of experience in major antitrust litigation. He is a Past President of the State Bar of Georgia and of the Younger Lawyers Section of the State Bar. He serves as a commercial and construction arbitrator and mediator for the American Arbitration Association and is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Georgia Bar Foundation. He received his B.A. and J.D. (with distinction) from Emory University.