Historical Trauma in the American South Event Recap

The second round of the PACEs Connection Historical Trauma in America series launched on July 21 with the first regional event, Historical Trauma in the South. The event was facilitated by PACEs Connection staff members Ingrid Cockhren (chief executive officer) and Carey Sipp (director of strategic partnerships) with support from St. David's Foundation.

Click here to download the slide deck from this presentation. Then click “download file.”

The series examines the impact of intergenerational trauma on the health and well-being of individuals today. Historical trauma—another term for intergenerational trauma—is defined by Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart as multigenerational trauma experienced by a specific cultural group resulting in “a cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma.” As recent advances in the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs) continue to show the profound impact of historical trauma on society today, PACEs Connection launched this series to educate and empower people to take action to mitigate its adverse impact and promote resilience in their regions.

Due to its popularity, PACEs Connection's Race & Equity Workgroup is repeating the “Historical Trauma in America Series” in 2022-23.

Register now for future regional sessions, including the next session on Historical Trauma in the Midwestern States on September 15, 2022. Click HERE to register.

Participants were very engaged in the session, as indicated by select contributions and comments below:

Tamice Spencer-Helms: “It is so unfortunate to me that some folks in this country would rather ignore and dismiss this history and buy into fallacy about BIPOC rather than humbling themselves. I wonder what would happen if those folks understood that these are the very people who can lend them the resilience they gained in enduring the history so that they could survive confronting it.”
Teri Lassiter: “In Mississippi, there have been at least 8 suspected lynchings since 2000, this hasn't stopped, the media just doesn't report it!”
Tamice Spencer-Helms: “Possibly the most troubling vestige of this is the tendency to talk about indigenous people in past tense--it speaks to that attempt at erasure in my opinion.”
Sarah Frost: “It is so ironic for the perpetrators of genocide to call their victims uncivilized. It also makes me think about the dialogue today where people fighting for equality are demonized and people opposed to critical race theory make themselves (and children) out to be the victims.”
Alison Lobb: “Sending love to all who are feeling pain, distress, and anger while revisiting these horrors, injuries, and injustices. Be sure to breathe!”

Topics covered by PACEs Connection staff:

Overview of the series, including a review of the concepts of collective trauma, intergenerational transmission of trauma, and historical trauma, featuring the RYSE Center’s infographic on Interacting Layers of Trauma and Healing framework.
Historical examples of traumatic events impacting Native Americans, including the “dehumanization of Native Americans by settlers and explorers who came to claim land for churches and kings,” the Trail of Tears, which involved the removal of over 100,000 Native Americans from land that they had lived on for generations, and the separation of Native children from their families through the use of boarding schools. Sipp showed one result of these and other policies: a map of the 2020 US Census showing very few Native Americans in the Southeast.
Historical examples of traumatic events impacting African Americans, including the following:
- Enslaved African Americans who tried to escape slavery were given the a “diagnosis” of drapetomania (mental illness characterized by irrational desire to escape slavery) and were “treated” with beatings during the era of American slavery (1619-1865);
- The end of slavery and Reconstruction (1865-1890) brought no punishment for killing or harming Black people, overt racism, lynchings, and the beginning of mass incarceration since prisoners were allowed to be enslaved;
- The terror and violence during the Jim Crow era (1890-1965) sundown towns, in which Black people were prohibited from being outside after sunset. Black parents used strict parenting methods because they were desperate to keep their children inside and safe from the white men who would terrorize and brutalize people who were outside after curfew;
- The lack of empathy for African Americans experiencing drug addiction during the War on Drugs and the crack epidemic (1970-1995) and the Jane Crow era in which children were removed en masse from African American mothers dealing with addiction and poverty.
Data on current health outcomes for African Americans and Native Americans. Sipp shared data on the Indigenous population in Robeson County, NC, that showed higher rates of children in poverty, violent crime, and injury deaths than in other regions of North Carolina. Cockhren shared that the life expectancy for African Americans is seven years less than for white Americans. As Cockhren stated, “Certain groups are more susceptible to chronic disease because of historical trauma. The trauma ancestors experienced has changed physical bodies, epigenetics, and the way that people get treated. This affects health.”

Additional resources shared by participants included:

Maryah Thomas: “Check out the documentary Stealing a Nation regarding the UK and the US taking by force the Chago Islands in the 1960s and 70s to build a military base.”
Natalia Fernandez: The movie, Indian Horse shows the story of Native Americans in Canada who were torn from their families and all the trauma/discrimination they faced. It's heartbreaking and infuriating.
Dixie Zittlow: I just watched a great TED today that is helping me process this: The Danger of a Single Story.
Mathew Portell: “Dr. Robert Sege and Dr. Chan Hellman and Dr. Christina Bethell have all done terrific work on the importance of positive childhood experiences and hope. You can also look at Dr. Sege and Dr. Bethell's works around the HOPE Framework. They completed the PCE study!
Natalie Audage: “Learn more about the science of hope from the Hope Research Center in Oklahoma.”
Jude Rose: “I'd like to share a learning resource that I'm reading with a group: Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy - gives a lot of history of structure by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae - very informative re: how we got here...”
Carey Sipp:
- “Just finished reading “White Rage” by Carol Anderson. The fear Whites were steeped in by manipulative leaders who fostered the enmity for their own benefit, is astounding.”
- “The Sum of Us” by Heather McGhee…is invaluable to understand the White mindset of ‘there's not enough; if White people don't own everything there won't be anything for them.’”
- “PACEs Connection created this infographic on the Path to a Just Society to help us and our communities name and claim where they are, and see the ideal.”
- “Watch the video of Mathew [Portell] and Ingrid [Cockhren] talking with Dr. Bruce Perry about Historical Trauma in America and the book he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, “What Happened to You?” It is an important conversation on historical, or intergenerational trauma. In the conversation, Bruce Perry said, ‘To understand trauma, you need to know history. To understand history, you need to know trauma.’”
- YOU can host a book study on “What Happened to You?” through a new PACEs Connection initiative we have, “Connecting Communities One Book at a Time.” Learn how on July 27 by registering for "What Happened to You?" Book Study Leader Training by Children’s Trust Fund Alliance.

Register NOW for future Historical Trauma in America regional sessions, including our next session on Historical Trauma in the Midwestern States on September 15, 2022! The series is presented with support by the St. David's Foundation.