We are pleased to announce
the webber family preservation project
has been awarded a mellon foundation grant
Press Release: 10/20/2024
The Mellon Foundation has awarded the Webber Family Preservation Project a grant of $150,000.00 to support research and archive development, an interactive mapping project, and infrastructure improvements at the Webber Ranch cemetery over the next 24 months.
Headed by three principal investigators, Leslie Treviño, President of the Webber Family Preservation Project, Dr. minerva T. Gatling, Co-President of VIVA Nonprofit Organization, and Dr. María Esther Hammack, Assistant Professor of African American History at the Ohio State University, this grant will help develop and bring to fruition the above mentioned projects.
Together, this dynamic trio will focus on 1) bridging little known stories of Black liberation across the US Mexico border lands and waters, 2) empower descendant communities to research, recover, and reclaim their ancestors' histories, and 3) help disseminate the life and legacy of Silvia Hector Webber, a Black woman who not only fought to be free herself, but who engineered pathways for others to also claim freedom across the Texas borderlands and in Mexico.
The Webber Family Preservation Project is an IRS approved 501 (c) (3) organization that was established in 2022 to preserve the Webber Family Cemetery. Our Mission is to educate the public, preserve and research the Webber family of Texas and their endeavors in the aid of others seeking freedom in Mexico by way of the Underground Railroad into Mexico and other individuals that were involved in that heroic endeavor. Thus enabling people to better understand the history of race in Texas, The United States, Mexico, and The Borderlands, the consequences of that history both then, and now.
Our goal through this grant is to empower, if not foster academic, descendant, and public discourse to bridge how we present, recover, and reclaim our collective past. The Black Diaspora that shaped the United States and Mexico, and Mexico's role in the stories of abolition in the Americas, are shared histories deeply entwined that connect people, culture, and spaces. We aim to not only bring visibility to actors and histories that remain on the margins of our historical interpretations, memory and popular narratives, but to make strides to ensure that our writing and rewriting of our past is inclusive of descendants, on both sides of the US-Mexico borderlands and waters.
Our organization was formed on the principle that a more equitable and accurate representation of history is only possible with the inclusion of descendants in researching, telling, and preserving that history. The history of the Webber Family, principally of Silvia Hector Webber, in aiding people to freedom through the Underground Railroad into Mexico is an important yet Undertold History that has been overlooked and minimized by historians in the past.
To that end the work we will do with the Mellon Foundation funding will help bridge the chasm between academia and the public, by encouraging a more collaborative approach that ensures a more accurate understanding of people, communities, places, and cultures.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation's largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.
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