Team profile by Lindsay Huth

America’s Hallowed Ground (AHG) is a project within the Kenan Institute for Ethics that uses the multidisciplinary arts to share the stories of places and moments in which America has fallen short of our noble ideals of equality, justice and democracy. These sites remind us of our vows kept and unkept, reveal our responsibilities met and unmet, and motivate us to pursue a more perfect union.

AHG’s first partnership was located in Wilmington, North Carolina, where white supremacists staged a violent coup in 1898 to suppress the growing political power of African Americans. The project also has partnerships underway in Cherokee, N.C., the site of the forced removal of the Cherokee people, and Durham, N.C., home to Indigenous people, descendants of the enslaved and freedom fighters.

This year, our Bass Connections team helped AHG develop its public-facing website to better tell the AHG story, reflect the work already accomplished and help AHG identify future sites and partners. The team also helped design a curriculum, which will also be housed on the website, that will enable teachers and schools to engage students in grades 7-12 in the work of identifying local sites of hallowed ground and responding to those sites with art.

In the fall semester, the Bass Connections team focused on developing content for the America’s Hallowed Ground website. Team members primarily focused on telling the story of the project’s work in Wilmington. Team members research the events surrounding the Wilmington coup, its aftermath and the work AHG has accomplished in partnership with Wilmington artists, historians and community members.

Students then drafted copy for the new web pages, gathered appropriate visuals and designed proposed page layouts. The AHG team is now working with The Kenan Institute for Ethics to bring those pages (and others) online.

In the spring semester, the Bass Connections team focused on developing the AHG curriculum. This process was led by our curriculum specialist, Kendall Surfus. Our team primarily helped with the development of student-facing digital resources called Artists’ Workshops. Each workshop will walk students through the process of creating art – designing and painting a mural, writing a piece of creative writing from someone else’s perspective, or performing a one-person monologue or poem – in order to honor a site of hallowed ground.

Our team helped build the content and design the look and feel of these workshops. We also helped gather primary source documents for students to analyze as they learn about Wilmington in other phases of the curriculum. The curriculum is in its final stages of development.

Finally, work on the website and curriculum highlighted the need to clarify the language AHG uses to describe its work and the criteria it uses to determine what sites are “hallowed ground.” Our team also drafted, edited and finalized language detailing AHG’s mission, approach and criteria, which will guide the way AHG talks about the project going forward. Team members also created a visual style guide, including logos, colors and typography, which will ensure all of the web, curricular and marketing materials feel cohesive and clearly communicate AHG’s identity and mission.