Grant Story: Enduring Families Project
February 11, 2022
 | By Jamie Schloegel, Chief Executive Officer |
Under the fiscal sponsorship of the La Crosse County Historical Society, the Enduring Families Project (EFP) has been sharing the local history of African-Americans and other non-white settlers through public school-based educational programs and community-based historical reenactments. Thanks to the dream and hard-work of two retired Milwaukee public high school teachers, Denise Christy Moss and Rebecca Mormann-Krieger, to create a public theater based on the stories of early African-American settlers to the La Crosse County and Cheyenne Valley, EFP has benefited our community since 2018.
The mission of Enduring Families Project is “to substantially broaden the local historical narrative by the positive portrayal of the contributions, struggles, and perseverance of early non-white settlers, providing a venue for the development of understanding and respect between people in our community and a further springboard for community conversations.”
Bringing history to life
Enduring Families Project shares historical stories of African-Americans and other non-white settlers from the region through skits in public schools and at various organizations. Most of the EFP’s actors are BIPOC and live and work locally, allowing them to share their belief in the EFP mission not just through performing, but through their everyday involvement in our community.
The Enduring Families Project highlights the stories of both well-known and lessor-known early settlers in our community. Each of these stories plays an integral part of our local history and thanks to EFP is shared and emphasized.
Using modern technology to share the important contributions of African-American’s from our community’s past
In conjunction with the School District of La Crosse and with the help of a La Crosse Community Foundation grant, in addition to other donors, the Enduring Families Project videos have come to fruition.
The historical monologues of EFP now have over 10 professionally produced videos that showcase historical reenactments and feature local early settler’s stories. Sharing these stories via video creates venues where our community can come together and bridge gaps in knowledge of this historical contributions of local African-Americans.
To give the monologues a historical feel they were filmed at locations such as the Hixon House and Hamilin Garland Homestead with the actors in period dress. The still images will include historical photographs as well as pictures of local historical sites such as the round barns, gravestones, local buildings and locations such as Nathan Hill and Cheyenne Valley.
A response to the call for more culturally-relevant and inclusive curriculum in our district
La Crosse Historical Society Executive Director, Peggy Derrick, states “the racial divide in our country is fueled by an incomplete understanding of history and minimal contact between people of different backgrounds. This divide produces biases which are mirrored within the practices of health care, criminal justice, and governmental systems.”
She further states: “The Enduring Families Project is an important step in building community and a sense of belonging to our rapidly growing African American population in La Crosse. Providing knowledge about early African-American residents of La Crosse serves as an opportunity to promote understanding and relationship-building between white and non-white community members. Our youth of color need to feel a sense of identity and connection to their community, to be successful within the systems in which they learn and grow.”
These videos help to bring this nearly invisible history to the schools and community, by illustrating the contributions, struggles, and perseverance of early African-American settlers to foster pride, resiliency, feelings of belonging, and community cohesion. This furthers the work of multi-ethnic inclusivity. In this way, the people of this community, especially its children, will continue to have the opportunity to see themselves reflected in the local history. As one African-American mother stated, “If a child cannot see themselves in the past, they cannot see their future.”
View the EPF videos and learn more!
Learn more about the Enduring Families Project and view the videos here.
Support the LCF fund that helped the EFP video project become a possibility by clicking here.
