When Donnamarie Barnes and David E. Rattray launched the Plain Sight Project in 2016, there was “maybe a germ of an idea,” Ms. Barnes said, that their research into the history of slavery on the East End could eventually play into what kids are learning in local schools.
About seven years later, buoyed by a partnership with the Sag Harbor Cinema and a $200,000 grant facilitated by Senator Chuck Schumer, that’s exactly what’s taking place now.
The Forgetting to Remember Project, a collaboration between the Cinema and the Plain Sight Project that has continued to investigate the history and impact of slavery on the East End, tapped Christina Lesh and Cheryl Dobbertin of Lesh EDvantage Consulting to develop the Forgotten to Remember curriculum. It will be implemented this year in middle-school history classrooms in East Hampton, Sag Harbor, the Ross School, and others on the East End.
“They know how to navigate, educationally, what was required to create the curriculum,” said Ms. Barnes, who is also curator and archivist at the Sylvester Manor Educational Farm on Shelter Island. “We gave them the information and told them the stories. What they came up with is very exciting and wonderful.”
Ms. Lesh and Ms. Dobbertin previously worked with Sylvester Manor on a program for fifth graders about the Manhansetts, the Indigenous community that was displaced by colonists on Shelter Island centuries ago.
For the Forgotten to Remember curriculum, Ms. Lesh and Ms. Dobbertin developed lessons and projects that will both educate students and nourish their curiosity. The materials are designed to align with New York State’s history curriculum standards, and can be woven into a teacher’s existing classroom lessons.
“Not only is it such rich and compelling history there, but also, the artifacts they have curated were just remarkable,” Ms. Lesh said, referring to the work of the Plain Sight Project and Forgetting to Remember Project. “The history was so beautifully crafted that we knew we were going to be able to tell these remarkable stories of the forgotten founders.”
Part of the curriculum package will be a screening of the short documentary “Forgotten Founders: David Hempstead, Senior,” which premiered in the spring at the Sag Harbor Cinema to a sold-out audience of community members and was also shown at last month’s Hamptons International Film Festival.
Students will analyze sources, texts, and artifacts “through the lens of a historian,” Ms. Lesh said. “They might be the authenticator, thinking about if the source is reliable and authentic, and how do we know? . . . We really challenge the misconception, and explore who might have benefited from the misconception, that slavery only happened in the South.”
There won’t be traditional classroom tests, Ms. Lesh said. Instead, the focus will be on projects such as choosing a “forgotten founder” to research more closely and producing a “mini documentary” to tell that person’s story.
“This is relevant, local work that matters for kids. Their local history is right there for them to see and touch,” she said. “The other piece that really matters is there is a deep need for this social-justice conversation and social-justice awareness for students. We wrestled with this ourselves — we shifted our own language to talk about the people of color, the Black people of the East End of Long Island who were enslaved. This is their history of manumission and emancipation. It’s important history.”
The seeds of the curriculum were planted before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Cara Nelson, a seventh-grade history teacher at East Hampton Middle School, recalled working with Jonathan Kuperschmid, a Plain Sight Project volunteer who was a student at East Hampton High School at the time, on a project that introduced students to the research being conducted. She’s looking forward to incorporating the Forgotten to Remember curriculum into this year’s lessons plans.
“In the past, it was really interesting to hear from students about how they had no idea that some of the buildings they pass every day were built on the backs of enslaved people,” Ms. Nelson said. “One of the biggest takeaways is that it’s important that we’re telling the history of all members of our community, and not just a select few.”
She later continued, “Something I always tell the kids is that learning about our past is the key to understanding our present and creating a better future.”
Phoebe Bennett, a 2018 Pierson High School graduate and second-generation Sag Harbor resident, said she first learned there were enslaved people on the East End not in school, but rather by volunteering later on as a researcher for the Forgetting to Remember Project. “Being in all these places where history has happened and not knowing about it is sort of shocking,” she said. “Sag Harbor is small and quaint and community oriented, but we are also part of the larger history that’s not remembered.”
From Pierson, Ms. Bennett went on to major in Africana and Latinx studies at the State University at Oneonta, graduating in May 2022. “Such a local, small project has such a potential to have an even bigger impact,” she said, “Whoever is receiving this knowledge and information . . . can connect the local story to the greater history of enslavement within America and New York State.”