NILA and local organizations will participate in a Day of Healing / Nationwide Bell Ringing Ceremony.
Please join our local community in ringing bells on August 25th, for four minutes starting at 2PM, in honor of the four centuries that have passed since the first Africans landed in Port Comfort in 1619.
This is a nationwide event organized by the National Park Service. For more information please visit their website.
The following is an excerpt taken from their communications on the event;
August 25, 2019 is the 400th anniversary of the first landing of enslaved Africans in English-occupied North America at Point Comfort in Hampton, Virginia, now part of Fort Monroe National Monument, a unit of the National Park System.
The anniversary will be commemorated at Fort Monroe as a day of healing and reconciliation. The park and its partners are inviting all 419 national parks, NPS programs, community partners, and the public to come together in solidarity to ring bells simultaneously across the nation for four minutes--one for each century--to honor the first Africans who landed in 1619 at Point Comfort and 400 years of African American history.
The following local organizations will be taking place in the event;
The Naperville Carillon
Congregation Beth Shalom
First Congregational UCC Naperville
If your organization plans on participating and is not listed, please feel free to email website@napervilleinterfaith.org and we’d be happy to add you to the list.