Witness Stones Project ’23
By Lexi Baez ’25
Learning about Nean, a real person that lived during slavery made everything we learned about America’s dark history much more real. Talking about slavery is a sensitive topic for me because I am a biracial person of color. I think it's very sad to learn that people from one of my races were treating people of my other race horribly. That's why it makes me so emotional whenever I talk about it but I also feel like it's important as much as it is painful. I think that we should learn what really happened and feeling bad that it happened is a good thing, not a bad thing.
I think one thing that got in the way of my learning was definitely arguing with my small group because it was really hard to get everyone to agree. Not everyone is going to have the same ideas or opinions and sometimes it's hard to have everyone's voice feel heard, but in the end we persevered and we all put in an equal amount of effort and got the work done.
I feel like my eyes are more open and my heart is more full when we have discussions about slavery and about enslaved people. It's very sad and it's a touchy subject for some people because some of our ancestors may have been enslaved and some of our ancestors were slave owners, so it’s hard for everyone. Studying this time period gives me a sense of sadness but I feel like I have a better understanding of slavery and what the life of an enslaved person may have been like.