KIRKPATRICK FOUNDATION

THE KIRKPATRICK FOUNDATION, INC.

The Kirkpatrick Foundation, Inc. is a 501c3 non-profit corporation established in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina by Stirring the Ashes, LLC in November 2024. 

The Foundation will sponsor educational and philanthropic efforts to implement honest explorations about American slavery, facilitate ways to safely talk about racism and privilege in racially diverse groups, offer methods for healing the hidden wounds of slavery and provide a model for other communities who want to engage in racial healing. 

Our Foundation opens its doors and activates its spirit at a time when race-based discrimination is ascending once again. Ideally, we can become a viable home for expertise on healing the wound of American slavery.

The Kirkpatrick Foundation traces concretely the throughline when White Kirkpatricks (De’s family) held Black Kirkpatricks (Jimmie Lee’s family) in bondage in Mecklenburg County. The Kirkpatrick Foundation wants to help individuals and institutions dedicated to or interested in interrogating, studying, or analyzing the truth about American slavery.

We believe there are many ways to define and implement reparations for enslavement. We see the educational and philanthropic undertakings of the Kirkpatrick Foundation as ways to identify, define, and implement strategies for making reparations for the traumatic injuries perpetrated by American slaveholding.

The activities will be conducted in public and private schools, colleges and universities, places of worship, community groups, corporations and businesses in and around Mecklenburg County, North Carolina and will be facilitated by Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick and De Kirkpatrick and other community leaders. They will utilize the story of the Kirkpatricks' ancestral slavery linkage to bring people together to think and talk honestly, clearly and consciously about these issues, employing screenings of a documentary about their story— “A Binding Truth”—, or partnering with Dr. Robert Johnson’s “Learning from the Future.” Presentations, lectures, videos and discussion groups will allow participants an opportunity hopefully to come to grips with the effects and legacy of slavery and white privilege. The Foundation will be funded through tax-exempt donations and will devote all its time and expenditures to these stated activities.

For more information and/or how to contribute, please contact us, indicating the Foundation in the Message box under “Contact.”