Hosted by York History Partners and Atlantic Black Box
DATE: Saturday, November 16, 2024
TIME: 10:00 am – 3:00 pm
LOCATION: First Parish Church, York
This Saturday, join us in experiencing the town of York in a new and powerful way—as the Descendants all of us are. We’ll warm up over homemade soup and bread and watch a rending performance by Antonio Rocha that will open a discussion about what happened here, what each of us carries in our lineages, and what it all might mean for us today.
In a Proclamation Against Racism, Discrimination and Bigotry signed in July of 2020, the town of York made a commitment to “identify and eliminate anything within its control that supports or perpetuates systemic or institutional racism or discrimination.”
Three hundred years ago, English colonists from the town of York played a significant role in the Norridgewock Massacre. Today, York residents invite you to join them in walking through York Village, considering the visible history of the landscape: private houses and public buildings, graveyards, monuments, street signs, and other elements of this four-hundred-year old English settlement.
As we walk, we will consider what memories of historical violence and legacies of racism remain embedded here, often obscured behind a romanticized Colonial Revival facade. As our two-mile route crosses the Wiggly Bridge and winds through Steedman Woods, we’ll have an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the area’s land use history and the impacts of climate change, considering whether there are connections between how we “other” certain people and how we “other” the land itself.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
10:00 am Welcome gathering at First Parish Church
11:00 am Two-mile walk through York Village
12:15 pm Soup & bread
1:00 pm Performance of The Malaga Ship by Antonio Rocha
2:00 pm Community response and dialogue
