LEVERETT — An interracial dialogue and cultural exchange project, which grew out of an earlier initiative in which people of different partisan leanings were invited to speak to each other, welcomes residents of South Carolina and Kentucky later this month.
Participants in Bridge4Unity, who traveled to Beaufort, S.C. in January, will have a reciprocal visit June 27 to June 30 with Paula Green of Leverett and Gloria Graves Holmes of Hilton Head, S.C. facilitating the discussion on race and white privilege.
The public is invited to learn more about Bridge4Unity at “Dialogues Across Race: South Carolina, Massachusetts, Kentucky,” a program that will take place June 29 at 4 p.m. at the University of Massachusetts Center, Tower Square, second floor, 1500 Main St., Springfield.
The public event will include talks about the successes and challenges of interracial dialogue and demonstrate the process of this exchange.
The visitors will be staying in the homes of local Bridge4Unity members and the conversations will be at sites between Amherst and Springfield. Plans include a stop at Mount Sugarloaf in South Deerfield for a land acknowledgment; visits to the Peace Pagoda in Leverett and the Pan African Historical Museum in Springfield; and a walking tour of Springfield’s underground railroad.
Bridge4Unity launched in September 2018 and was inspired by Hands Across the Hills, the cross-political dialogue project between residents of Leverett, who mostly supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and Letcher County, Ky., whose residents mostly voted for Donald Trump in that same election.
Local entrepreneur Deborah Snow envisioned using the same three-day exchange model for a dialogue across racial and ethnic lines. Once Green, an expert in global dialogue in post-conflict areas and director of Hands Across the Hills, agreed to facilitate, people were recruited to travel to South Carolina, including two indigenous people, and an even number of African-Americans and European-Americans. The local contingent also included two UMass professors, along with activists and others who live between Springfield and Shelburne Falls.
The stated purpose of the Bridge4Unity project is to work toward racial reconciliation and healing while contributing to dismantling racism and white supremacy.