Continuing Conversations on Race: Kristal C. Langford discusses the Lost Souls Public Memorial Project.

Doctoral candidate Kristal C. Langford, lecturer of Black studies and psychology at William Paterson University, discusses the Lost Souls Public Memorial Project. Please register for Zoom link.

The presentation highlights the resilience and resistance demonstrated by freed and enslaved Blacks who were sold to the Deep South out of New Jersey in 1818. The presentation also sheds light on the Middlesex County Judge Jacob Van Wickle’s participation in the domestic slave trade.

Kristal C. Langford, is a doctoral candidate in the Education, Culture and Society program Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Broadly conceived, her doctoral work, an historical inquiry, seeks to elucidate how the proliferation of Black bodies in New Jersey’s public schools during the Great Migration agitated the hegemony of whiteness in classroom practices, teaching and training materials. Kristal’s academic work is complemented by her profession and archival research examining local New Jersey history.

In 2019, Langford joined the Lost Souls Public Memorial Project. This entity is a grassroots organization committed to commemorating the lives and legacy of the 137 Black New Jerseyans lost to the Domestic Slave Trade. She’s featured on the PBS documentary, “The Price of Silence.” She co-authored the curriculum for The Lost Souls Public Memorial Project. Currently, Kristal serves as a thought leader on the Revolution 250 New Jersey, a not-for-profit partner of the New Jersey Historical Commission. She contributes her knowledge and expertise to the creation of an online repository of educational materials and resources for school districts and teachers – with a special emphasis on voices from historically marginalized and disenfranchised communities.