August 23, 2025 – Join us for our annual Day of Unity and Healing. This descendant-led event centers on shared history, healing, and education by bringing together descendants and interfaith and community leaders to recognize the interconnectedness of our lives and to honestly confront Sotterley’s past and build unity. The ceremony will begin at 10:00 am and will include a bell ringing ceremony to honor the lives and sacrifices of those who came before us.

After the ceremony, there will be wagon tours, open house tours, music by Casual Groove Band, a documentary quilt exhibit, archaeology updates from our community partners, and holistic health screenings. More information and an exact schedule are coming soon.

If you know you’ll be joining us, please consider registering so we have an idea of attendance. Thank you!

Register Here!

Documentary Story Quilt Workshop

12:30 pm

$30/person, limited space

Dr Joan M.E. Gaither will be conducting a documentary quilting workshop in the afternoon. No prior quilting experience is required. There will be an afternoon quilting workshop to provide an opportunity to learn about documentary story quilting and then you will be able to create your own quilt square using personal photographs and objects. Her documentary story quilts have been on display at each Day of Unity and Healing for the past four years. Registration is required.

Dr. Joan M.E. Gaither, a native Baltimorean with a history of helping to integrate local schools and businesses during the Civil Rights Movement, is an artist, teacher, and activist. She has created 183 documentary story quilts since 2000 and continues to hold quilting workshops that encourage participants to research, capture, and visualize personal oral histories and memories. Dr. Gaither’s documentary story quilts are a one-of-a-kind creation with complex themes and depth of expression in each quilt. Each documentary story quilt uses traditional quilting fabric’s, recycled clothing, and objects relevant to each quilt theme to create vibrant and colorful quilts to illuminate historical events, places or people that have shaped American History, She has created 300 documentary story quilts since 2000. Her documentary story quilts are included in personal collections and continue to be exhibited in local and national museums, galleries, schools, and churches.

Purchase Tickets

Are you interested in hearing more about human migration?  Visit Lexington Park Library to view the exhibit World on the Move, 250,000 Years of Human Migration, from July 21 – August 22, 2025.