Mission Statement of the Lawrence NAACP Community Coordination and History Committee: The mission of the Lawrence/Douglas County NAACP Community Coordination and History Committee is to develop and disseminate a more just and historically accurate narrative of the history of racial relations in our area to continue the community’s efforts to address current racial issues and facilitate reconciliation.

The Committee works on projects to document and develop the knowledge and understanding of African American history in Douglas County and to incorporate that knowledge and understanding into the activities of the local NAACP and other allied organizations.  Most of the work of the Committee is accomplished through subcommittees that are formed as needed to address specific concerns and projects.

Volunteers conduct research, design projects, organize programs, participate in public events, attend meetings, and otherwise apply their skills to fulfilling the mission of the Committee.

Recent examples of work successfully performed by subcommittees:

- Organizing the Lawrence/Douglas County Community Remembrance Project Coalition (CRP Coalition) that works with the Equal Justice Initiative of Montgomery, Alabama, to document and memorialize the lynching of three men from the Kansas River Bridge on June 10, 1882, and finds ways to bring reconciliation to the community that has been divided by race and end the intergenerational trauma resulting from past racial violence and oppression.

- Designing, fabricating, and having installed an informational panel at the Lawrence Aquatic Center that tells the story of the efforts to get the first integrated swimming pool opened in Lawrence in 1969.

Current projects being carried out by subcommittees:

- Assisting the CRP Coalition in its efforts to memorialize the three men who were lynched and foster reconciliation in the community.

- Working on a project titled Untold Stories: African American Burials in Douglas County, Kansas, that was funded by the Douglas County Heritage Council to locate, document, and make a public, searchable database of all African American burials in Douglas County to preserve the memory of those individuals and bring their contribution to the history of the community from obscurity.

- Determining ways to raise the awareness of other past examples of racial violence and oppression in the community and the helping to prevent any reoccurrence of similar actions in the future.