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Freedom Story Project will have a global impact

Memorial Field for Black Lives art installation at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site (News photo — Andy Flynn)

On Aug. 20, John Brown Lives! launched an important oral history website for people around the world.

It’s called the Freedom Story Project, and it’s modeled through the OurStoryBridge project that began in Keene Valley through the efforts of Jery Huntley and the Keene Valley Library Association. For this project, JBL! has partnered with OurStoryBridge, a free tool kit for producing a crowdsourced story project collecting and sharing a community’s unique history online.

Read more about the Freedom Story Project.

These audio stories can be heard online at www.freedomstoryproject.org.

The website features the first of many 3- to 5-minute personal accounts of the activism and engagement of ordinary people working for justice and for human and civil rights around the world. It includes stories such as “My Ancestor, Harriet Tubman,” “The Underground Railroad in the North Country,” “John Brown: Adirondacker” and “The Memorial Field for Black Lives.”

The first story for the Freedom Story Project — “The Fight for Freedom Is Never Over” — was collected on April 24 from Sasha Shekhter, a native of Kyiv, Ukraine, who was born when the country was part of the Soviet Union. The family moved to Texas, becoming political refugees.

“We need stories of resistance to tyranny, cruelty and oppression at home and around the world, of people standing together in solidarity and with courage and compassion, to fortify and inspire us to meet the extraordinary challenges we face today,” JBL! Executive Director Martha Swan said. “I hope that people willing to tell their stories of freedom and justice will email us at freedomstoryproject@gmail.com and help us share their examples with the world.”

Congrats to John Brown Lives! for launching this website. It is destined to help shape the conversation about justice and human and civil rights for generations to come.

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