“Working with the Simmons Center helped me develop my skills in archiving and deepen my understanding in practicing ethical care and policies for materials from marginalized communities. The Unfinished Conversations Series is significant in its scope and meaning, and it pushes for more collaborative and less extractive methods of preserving cultural heritage.”

Dan Everton ’24 A.M.
Unfinished Conversations Graduate Archivist

“I first heard about the Center after attending one of the Slavery and Legacy Walking Tours during my sophomore year. My time working as a garden caretaker not only taught me more about plants native to Rhode Island and their connection to the legacy of slavery – working at the Center also helped me to bridge connections between my own racial identity and my educational interests.”

Helena Evans ’24
Caretaker for the Symbolic Garden of the Enslaved

“Working on The Unfinished Conversations Series this past year has allowed me to not only contribute my perspective to a vital public humanities project, but has also re-shaped the manner in which I personally understand our histories, both told and untold. I hope the widening of perspective I’ve personally experienced in engaging with previously unhighlighted experiences and insights in the wake of the transatlantic slave trade will, through the exhibit and documentary, influence others in a similarly profound manner, so as to hopefully spark a material wreckoning with these histories.”

Gustav Hall ’24
Unfinished Conversations Researcher

“Through and within this reading group, I collaborated with and met some of the scholars and activists I admire most — exploring theory as practice, in community. Only in the Carceral State Reading Group could I have built up the foundational political knowledge that I did — about political prisoners (from Mumia Abu-Jamal to Martin Sostre) and what it means to free them all. Now that I work in the civil rights world, I know that my experience at the Simmons Center formed the best possible building blocks for the justice work I’m excited to continue.”

Sarah Ogundare ’24
Carceral State Reading Group Co-Facilitator