TIME WILL TELL

“Living history” amplifies voices once silenced

By Venita Jenkins

UNCW students are used to exploring history, but it’s rare for them to be a part of history.

Honors and geophysics students assisted the Third Person Project, a social justice nonprofit research group, with digitalizing historical records and locating the unmarked grave of 1898 Wilmington Massacre victim Joshua Halsey.

The applied learning opportunities are an outgrowth of the nonprofit’s Daily Record Project, an initiative dedicated to finding, digitizing and studying the few extant copies of The Wilmington Daily Record, the Black newspaper destroyed during the 1898 massacre.

Digitizing Pine Forest Cemetery’s 900-page registry was initiated in an Honors seminar. Once completed, the public will be able to easily locate graves in one of the state’s oldest African American cemeteries, including those of notable Black trailblazers and victims of the 1898 Wilmington Massacre.

The Honors students’ work has a “sense of living history,” said Joel Finsel ’14, cofounder of the Third Person Project. “We tried to instill in the students the sense that they were a part of something that was going to be lasting; that scholars were going to come and study these names.” Honors student Pecolia Thomas ’24, a marine biology major, learned about the project through the “Lost African American History in Wilmington” course.

“This experience has taught me that your voice can be heard, even when it’s many years later,” said Thomas. “I am sure that many African Americans didn’t believe that their story would be told, but here we are, playing a part in telling their stories, their trials, contributions and history they made in Wilmington.” Five different systems were used to map the more than 150-year-old cemetery, and a vast section of the property had been mislabeled, said John Jeremiah Sullivan, cofounder of the Third Person Project. Sullivan and Finsel used the records as well as a tip from the cemetery’s groundskeeper, James Lofton, to triangulate the location of Joshua Halsey’s grave.

With the help of Dr. Scott Nooner, professor in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, and his geophysics students, the Third Person Project was able to confirm the grave’s location using a groundpenetrating radar.

“We tried to map it out in a very careful grid and look for things that are the right depth and the right shape for a gravesite. We identified a very likely location for this gravesite,” said Dr. Nooner. “The project was more than just learning how to use this instrument. It was a connection to the City of Wilmington, to its history and to bring to light things that have been shoved under the rug and not taught correctly. Students felt it was an important thing to be doing.” Geology major Olivia Daynes ’21 said the project provided an opportunity to see how geophysics could be applied to the modern world outside of the scope of geology. “I’m not a Wilmington or North Carolina native, so I appreciated learning more about the place I’ve lived for four years,” Daynes said. “It’s heartbreaking to learn the stories of Wilmington’s past, and I’ll always remember the opportunity I had to make a positive impact.”

Dr. Shawn Bingham, director of the Honors College and associate dean of undergraduate studies, particularly appreciates the integrative nature of the work. “This project doesn’t just move students from the tunnel vision of one discipline to more interdisciplinary problem solving, it helps them understand that their learning can take the form of public action with a long-lasting legacy,” he said.

Sullivan sees opportunities for further research and to document the stories of individuals buried in Pine Forest Cemetery. “There’s a lot of research to be done, and it can be done in collaboration between the community and the academic world at UNCW,” Sullivan said. “The challenge is to not just memorialize things, but to understand them better.”

Learn more at thirdpersonproject.org