The Hungry River Collective
From 1918 to 1924, photographs of people and their surroundings were made at State Hospital, Goldsboro, North Carolina’s African American asylum. The Hungry River Collective is a community of care exploring how to care for the people in the pictures. Our work is to raise awareness and advocate for loving outcomes; our hope is that a lasting, loving family and community circle come together around them.
Do you know someone who might be interested in this circle? Please share your story, get involved, ask questions.
Working Ethical Standard of Engagement
We acknowledge the deep violation and damage done to the people in the pictures by enormous systemic failures at State Hospital, Goldsboro in North Carolina. This collection has become accessible in order to ensure access for families, understand history through reconnection and interrupt the patterns of the past in order to make a better future.
Please meet this collection with tremendous gravity and respect, that it may work on behalf of reclaiming this history and naming harm done and, in spite of harm done, restore dignity and respect privacy while offering reconnection to family and authentic paths to healing.
Our deep wishes for the people in the pictures is that their suffering never be repeated and that all engagement with them be in service to the sacredness of their lives.
May this collection’s accessibility never reviolate, but work on behalf of deeper connection with healing, peace and family everywhere.
We are
- Monica Lucas, Community Outreach Organizer;
- Chaitra Powell, Curator, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;
- Dominique Luster, Principle Archivist, Luster Company;
- Sarah Koonts, State Archivist of NC;
- Wanda Cox-Bailey, Afro-American History & Genealogical Society, President, Triangle Chapter;
- Brianna McGruder, Master's Student in Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;
- Vanessa Jackson, LCSW, author and speaker on issues of race and mental health, author, In Our Own Voice, founding member, Radical Optimist Collective.
- Hannah Jacobs, Digital Humanities Specialist for the Digital Art History and Visual Culture Research Lab, Duke University;
- Lou Brown, Director of Programs at the Forum for Scholars and Publics, Duke University;
- Tift Merritt, Artist.
Sponsors
