During Sunday’s children’s time I shared about the LandBack campaign of NAICCO (Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio).  They are one of two organizations to which we release our Reparative Debt Payments, part of our annual congregational budget. 

The other organization is called Land of the Freed.  They are led by Paisha Thomas, a descendant of the Randolph Freedpeople.  John Randolph was a Virginia slave-owner who manumitted his 383 slaves in his will, purchasing 3,200 acres for them in Mercer County, Ohio.  But when the freedpeople arrived to claim the land, they were turned away by white residents threatening violence.  Many of the freedpeople ended up settling near Piqua.  Paisha and Land of the Freed are telling this story and exploring avenues for repairing this wrong.    

While the number of acres has been known since the will, the precise location of the land had been lost to history.   But this past fall, a geography class at Miami University, in partnership with a professional surveyor, dedicated their semester to this project.  They researched historic deeds and managed to pinpoint nearly all the 3,200 acres.  Last week an article from the Ohio Capital Journal tells this exciting story and how the class went about doing this work. 

I was able to have coffee with Paisha two weeks ago.  She spoke about how meaningful it was to have the particular plots of land determined.  She also wanted to pass on her appreciation for how the funds from Columbus Mennonite have supported the ongoing work of Land of the Freed.  So I’m passing that on to you now.