Moving forward our initiatives help educate, unify and heal.

  • Curriculum

    Curriculum design, developed by Patricia Ward Cooper, is adapted and modified according to the social justice analytical framework. Our hope is this curriculum aides us in educating others about the importance of the Ed Johnson case, but helps our students fulfill the Preamble’s charge to us all, which is to build a more perfect union, and as Dr. King dreamed, to build up and plant atop good a fertile ground, the Beloved Community.

    LEARN

  • Scholarship

    Established in 2009 with proceeds from "Dead Innocent-The Ed Johnson Story" a play written by LaFrederick Thirkill to honor the memory of 24 year old Ed Johnson, the ideal scholarship recipient is committed to truth and justice. This one year scholarship is in the amount of $1,000 ($500 Fall / $500 Spring).

    APPLY

  • Community

    It is critical for communities across the country, including Chattanooga, to do the difficult work of unearthing and confronting our own histories of racial injustice, while exploring how that history continues to shape the present. The Community Remembrance Project shares research findings and supports community memorialization work.

    LEARN

Documentary

The spirit of this project is carried through a documentary film, enabling this story to reach beyond our community and touch the lives and hearts of millions of people.

Local Chattanooga filmmaker Linda Duvoisin is working to create an hour-long documentary entitled “I am a Innocent Man: the Ed Johnson Story.” A graduate of  Vanderbilt University in Communications, Duvoisin has worked for public television, Walter Cronkite, National Geographic, and Discovery Networks, among others. She completed a film for the Tennessee State Museum for its exhibit on the Nashville Sit-ins of 1960. The piece has won numerous awards and was selected for the 2011- 2012 Southern Circuit. Duvoisin was one of 25 filmmakers chosen out of 210 applicants to participate in the CPB/PBS Producers Academy at WGBH in Boston in 2011. In 2010, she was awarded a Makework grant for filmmaking by CreateHere, and in 2008 she was awarded an Individual Artist Grant for filmmaking by the Tennessee Arts Commission. Her feature length film, you don’t know what i got, is about the passions and struggles of five women and has been screened in over 25 film festivals worldwide and won numerous awards.