Vote Your Voice: Group helps Southern change leaders learn from each other
By: Esther Schrader   
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Lyord Watson Jr. thought he was well versed in the history surrounding the Emancipation Proclamation.

He had every reason to be. A preacher who is founder and CEO of Penny Foundation Inc., a Birmingham, Alabama-based community chest working to eliminate economic inequality in the Black community, Watson has made understanding the American story, particularly where it concerns his people, something of a mission.

But a documentary film Watson viewed at a retreat this past August, organized by the nonprofit Mosaic Changemakers, gave him new perspective on how much he didn't know.

The film, "Lakota Nation vs. United States" was about the execution of 38 Indigenous people who fought white settlers over the loss of their homeland in the Dakota War, also known as the Sioux uprising. Convicted of murder or rape after a series of cursory trials in which they were denied counsel, the Sioux fighters were hung on the orders of President Abraham Lincoln on Dec. 26, 1862, just six days before the so-called champion of oppressed people signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

"I'm still grappling with how these two things could have been true at the very same time," Watson said. "You've got two different peoples one fighting to keep their land, one fighting for freedom and the timelines are overlapping. ... I don't know everything, but I try to study what is generally not out there and know something about it. Yet I never put these two timelines together before."

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