GREENFIELD — After dedicating 17 years to shining a light on systemic racism and spreading the mission of racial justice in Franklin County, the grassroots organization Racial Justice Rising came to a close at the end of June.
“It was a very difficult decision,” said Teegrey Iannuzzi, a co-founder of the organization. “It feels like a natural ending.”
In the email announcing the closure, Iannuzzi wrote that the volunteer organization lacked the “people power” to continue. Over the phone, she explained that the group’s volunteer base started dwindling after the COVID-19 pandemic, when online opportunities for anti-racism work expanded. Although the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer sparked “some surge” of interest in the group, Iannuzzi said, the organization eventually shrunk to just its board members, Gloria Matlock and Kim Wolcott.
“I feel sad that it’s over,” said co-founder Annie Keough. “I really had a wonderful time being in that group.”
Although the Racial Justice Rising members will no longer update its website, racialjusticerising.org, the Traprock Center for Peace & Justice will keep it online as a “library” of its legacy and resources, as Iannuzzi described.
According to Iannuzzi, the grassroots group grew from an apology.
In 1998, Iannuzzi embarked on a New England Peace Pagoda peace walk “[retracing] the steps of the transatlantic slave trade,” including the sites of slave auction blocks, entry ports for the ships that carried slaves and trees where slaveholders lynched the enslaved.
“On that walk, I learned a history that I didn’t learn in the schools, and it was a really eye-opening experience,” Iannuzzi said. “That’s what really made me see the need for a [person of] European descent to take action to address this history. … This scar on our country, this wound, hasn’t really been tended to for healing.”
Iannuzzi met with Keough and the third co-founder, Sharin Alpert, and the trio followed the guidance of former University of Massachusetts Amherst anthropology professor Enoch Page to create a statement of apology titled, “Slavery & Its Legacy: Facing Our Unhealed Past.”
The statement outlines the history of slavery in the United States dating back to the colonists who enslaved Native Americans in the 1500s and 1600s, the inhumane treatment of slaves and their resistance, backlash after the passage of the 13th Amendment, the civil rights movement and the current forms of systemic racism rooted in slavery.
“Words cannot express our remorse for the long history of unrelenting violence caused by our collective white ancestors. Nor can words describe our sorrow for the pain and suffering that continue today because of our destructive attitudes and behaviors, and our failure to stop this ongoing devastation. We have a sacred responsibility to right these wrongs,” the statement reads. “For all of this, we apologize to people of African descent in this country, to the communities in Africa from which their ancestors were abducted, and to the descendants of all others who were enslaved in this country.”
The writers then commit to six steps to “continue our work toward justice and reconciliation” like deepening their understanding of their own racism, educating others on systemic racism, promoting a fair telling of history, acknowledging people’s differences and “shared humanity,” becoming global citizens and supporting reparations for the descendants of the enslaved.
Iannuzzi, Keough and Alpert collected 700 signatures for the commitment, and Iannuzzi shared these with state Rep. Michael Day in 2024 as the House considered a bill calling for statewide reparations.
“I said, ‘There is support for this,’ and I gave them all the signatures, and that was our dream when we started in 2009,” Iannuzzi said. “I was so happy to follow through on that commitment.”
From there, the group created a website and switched its name from “Mass Slavery Apology” to “Racial Justice Rising” to encompass its pursuit of justice for all marginalized racial groups. Its volunteers gathered for vigils and programs on topics like Kwanzaa, the experience of Black Franklin County residents, white privilege, anti-Asian hate, solidarity with Palestine and the Indigenous history of the region.
Looking back on Racial Justice Rising’s work, Keough remembered having discussions about “painful truths,” when members of color shared their lived experiences with racism and white volunteers often confronted their “inner racist.”
“The vision was to spread the word about anti-racism, and to get people to dig in their guts and their personal lives and in their consciousness about what ways they found racism in themselves,” Keough described. “It’s freeing for people when they can realize that they do have an inner racist, and when they can talk to that part of themselves and say, ‘Well, you don’t really need to have that racist point of view, do you?’… It was a beautiful thing.”
“Organizing work is a lot about relationships and building trust in each other and connecting,” Iannuzzi said. “I feel like the only change we can really make is local. … That’s the way it starts, is with ourselves and our neighbors and people that we can connect with and communicate with.”
Although Iannuzzi said the end of Racial Justice Rising carries a sadness, she mentioned that several other organizations in Greenfield, like Stone Soup Café, All Souls Church, Greening Greenfield and The LAVA Center, share their commitment to anti-racism.
“The important work lives on in other avenues,” she said.
Correction, July 22, 2026 5:33 pm: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referenced the number of years Racial Justice Rising was active and the original name of the organization. Racial Justice Rising co-founder Teegrey Iannuzzi explained that the group's original name, "Mass Slavery Apology," had a double meaning, encompassing the state of Massachusetts and the mass of people she and her co-founders envisioned would be willing to apologize for slavery.
