The Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition (OCCRC) is accepting applications for its 2020 Graduate Fellowship until September 23, 2019. The Fellowship is open to doctoral students in the humanities/humanistic social sciences and enrolled in an eligible department in the College of Arts & Sciences. For more information and to submit an application, go to their website.
The OCCRC
The Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition was formed in 2018. It is co-chaired by James E. Williams, Jr. and Orange County Commissioner Renee Price. The Coalition (OCCRC) works in partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), is to obtain from EJI’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a duplicate monument in concert with the EJI Community Remembrance Project.that In that vein, OCCRC’s goal is to advance public acknowledgement of racial terror toward the remediation of the legacies of dehumanization and traumatization and the possibility that truth can yield meaningful reconciliation. Orange County’s part of this work is to memorialize the lynching of Manly McCauley in Chapel Hill in 1898. In order to accomplish this goal, we envision a collaborative effort and process involving many organizations and individuals over the next several years. The goal of this undertaking is to educate and engage the broader public on the history of racial terror and lynching and its lingering impact on our society today. We believe it is important to reckon with the truth of our past to understand our present and guide our future.
Fellow’s Project
The goal for this fellowship is to produce and disseminate materials which stabilize and extend the public presence of the OCCRC on its website and through social media communications. This will mean assisting the OCCRC communications committee with all aspects of communication. The fellow will be responsible for updating content, taking and disseminating new pictures, sharing information about upcoming events and building processes for event registration. Creative communications task may include print as well as social media. Hence this will include designing/creating event fliers and programs, assist in drafting press release and op-eds, and using social media to expand OCCRC’s outreach. Finally, the fellow will be expected to attend monthly Coalition meetings as a co-organizer when possible, and assist in maintaining records/minutes.
Qualifications
The ideal candidate will have a personal or professional investment in Black history, public humanities and/or public engagement, a commitment to seeking truth as a keystone means of building justice, and an interest in working with a unique, diverse coalition taking on crucial historical work. The candidate should also be well-organized, efficient, and a capable writer, with at least some experience building websites and an enthusiasm for using social media to reach people.