BUZZ Watch Party stars "Raising the Shade"

To conclude our 5th season, BUZZ highlights the Franklin County NAACP's "Raising the Shade" community forum on May 31 that shared with hundreds of people from across the Commonwealth the history of the county’s 70 African-American men who fought for the Union during the Civil War.

This event provides a "sneak peek" at our episode – part 3 of our 4-part Raising the Shade series – that airs August 27 at 7:00 pm EDT on Blue Ridge PBS.

Funded by the Mellon Foundation through Virginia Tech’s Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia, "Raising the Shade" seeks to provide citizens with a fuller history of the Civil War rather than the racist one depicted by a Confederate monument on the Franklin County courthouse lawn.


About the episode:

Monuments are all around us … testaments to people and places of the past. One such monument stands on the courthouse lawn in Franklin County, Virginia, honoring the county’s ancestors who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

But the nonprofit Franklin County NAACP has begun asking: Why do we honor these forefathers who fought for a cause to keep other forefathers of ours enslaved? What role did the foremothers have in preserving this history? And, if we insist on memorializing one side of the story, can we at least start to pay tribute to the other?

With funding they’ve received from the Mellon Foundation as part of a Virginia Tech led initiative titled “Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia,” these citizens have banded together to form an organization called “Raising the Shade.” Their mission: create new monuments that celebrate the county’s 70 African-American ancestors who fought for the Union during the Civil War in a branch of the Army known as the United States Colored Troops.

Also check out other Business events in Rocky Mount, Nonprofit events in Rocky Mount.