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What is the Enduring Families Project?
Enduring Families Project at People Fest 2019
Photo by Phil S Addis
The Enduring Families Project is an inter-woven two-part venture exploring the local history of African-Americans and other non-white settlers. The two arms include a public school-based educational program and community-based historical reenactments. The Project is under the fiscal sponsorship of the La Crosse County Historical Society.
The goals of the Enduring Families Project are to build a more cohesive multicultural community through an inclusive history, to provide venues for community discussions and to create opportunities for direct interactions between the diverse peoples of La Crosse.
The Enduring Families Project, or EFP, started out with the dream of two retired Milwaukee public high school teachers, Denise Christy Moss and Rebecca Mormann-Krieger, to create public theater based on the stories of early African-American settlers to La Crosse County and Cheyenne Valley to our south. They developed a mission statement: “to substantially broaden the local historical narrative by the positive portrayal of the contributions, struggles, and perseverance of early non-white settlers, providing a venue for the development of understanding and respect between people in our community and a further springboard for community conversations.”
Since the summer of 2018, they have performed skits in public schools and for various organizations that tell stories of African-Americans living in this region since the early days of Prairie La Crosse. All of their actors are African-Americans who live and work locally, and who believe in the mission of the project and are excited to be bringing this history to life. Some of the characters they portray, like Olympic medalist George Poage, are fairly well-known, while others who were once important community members have been largely forgotten. All are a part of the web of local history.
