Powered by Melanin MeetUps, The Better Together Project is a powerful initiative to memorialize the African-American narrative for future generations. The initiative targets education, cultural landmarks, and media to develop a more cohesive story of the African-American experience to raise awareness of African-American history and facilitate wellness and healing within the community and country.

The initiative launched in June 2020 through a change.org petition to nullify verbiage used to glamorize plantation homes on the Louisiana River Road Tourist Commission site. With over 2.5K signatures, the petition captured global news, leading The Better Together Project to be featured in Essence, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and NPR.

Since then, the groundbreaking initiative has partnered with school systems in America, leading Hollywood agencies for content expansion and impactful landmarks to achieve its goal. In 2023, Melanin MeetUps partnered with the Stone Flip Foundation to receive donations to expand The Better Together Project initiatives and build a path to 501c(3) status.

The Better Together Project’s goal is to memorialize the African American narrative and experience through 3 initiatives:

1. Cultural Landmarks: Memorialize plantations in the country

The goal is to develop and implement The Better Together Project’s framework on how best to memorialize plantations, address ground zero of systemic racism, and honor the African-American community and narrative for future generations.

The Better Together Project will partner with plantations across the country to proactively ensure correct storytelling of the enslaved experience and to stop weddings and corporate events from taking place on these hallowed grounds. The founder currently serves on the board of The Whitney Plantation.

Donate now to help us develop a research team to target plantations, travel sites, and tourist commissions that continue to market weddings and promote slave cabins as hotels.

The Whitney Plantation, The Washington Post

2. Education: Implement Ida B. Wells's literature in schools

The goal is to partner with public school systems and homeschool programs for the adoption of the IDAREAL curriculum which honors African-American history.

The IDAREAL curriculum is designed to prevent future global atrocities caused by prejudices. The curriculum incorporates Ida B. Wells’ texts’ on mob lynchings of American citizens who were Black (The Red Record and Southern Horrors) and The Better Together Project framework to help students and faculty objectively recognize present-day systems of othering to prevent future atrocities. The curriculum is currently used in the Richmond Public Schools district (Richmond, Virginia) as part of the REAL Richmond course.

Donate now to help us raise funds for team management and resources needed to expand our curriculum.

Ida B. Wells

3. Media: Elevate Black storytelling

The goal is to partner with media networks, landmark venues, and organizations to expand Illuminate (Black Ted Talks) for global Black storytelling.

Illuminate is a powerful series that brings together leading luminaries from the African-American community to provide ideas and solutions to move the community and world forward. The Black Ted Talks, Illuminate, has become the ultimate storytelling experience to turn ideas into meaningful action for today’s leading problems. Notable alumni and partnerships include Cory Booker, Dr. Thema Bryant Davis, Gersh Agency, and Here Media.

Donate to help us build a team to build a video catalog and attain resources to expand.

Links:

melaninmeetups.org/thebettertogetherproject

Donation

Press

Melanin MeetUps presents The Better Together Project

By Stone Flip Foundation

Melanin MeetUps presents The Better Together Project