“Black History Is Not Behind Us. It’s Happening Now.”
— Sean Ellis, Director, Exoneree Network
This Black History Month, we reflect on a core truth of collective struggle: what impacts one of us impacts all of us.
We are living in a moment when systems of power are openly harming our neighbors—through wrongful convictions, through immigration enforcement, and through the ongoing criminalization of Black and brown communities. People are taken from their lives, their families, and their futures. Members of our community have been taken off the street and locked away under the name of a “wrongful conviction.” Others are taken under the banner of immigration enforcement. Different labels. The same dehumanization. The same violence. The same injustice.
This is not history—it is the present. And it should outrage us.
Black history teaches us that freedom has never been won alone. Progress has always come from people choosing to struggle together and to insist that dignity and safety belong to everyone. At the New England Innocence Project, we see this legacy carried forward every day by our clients—many of them Black men—who endure unimaginable harm and still fight not only for their own freedom, but for the freedom of others.
Your support—whether it’s financial, showing up to an event, sharing our work, or standing alongside our community—is part of that ongoing remembrance and resistance. It fuels collective care, challenges systems of oppression and systemic racism, and helps build a future where no one is disposable.
This Black History Month, we recommit ourselves to collective struggle, shared responsibility, and the belief that our liberation is bound together. Thank you for standing with us.