Truth and Transformation uncovers forgotten stories, inviting healing, courage, and shared remembrance
What is Truth & Transformation?
Truth & Transformation is a community-led initiative that confronts suppressed histories in order to build a future grounded in justice, remembrance, and healing. Every project is rooted in the voices and visions of the communities most impacted, because dignity begins with being seen and heard.
What We Do
- Illuminate suppressed histories of racial violence, forced labor, and systemic exclusion
- Create memorials and educational tools that foster healing and awareness
- Mobilize policy and cultural change through community-led initiatives
- Connect with other communities through delegations that foster co-created strategies for justice
Forced Labor Memorialization
How What We Buy Impacts Global Human Rights
From Bellwood Quarry to the Chattahoochee Brick Company site, this effort exposes the violent legacy of convict leasing and honors the lives exploited in the name of progress. Through AR tools, public art, and civic education, we invite Atlantans to reflect, remember, and demand better from our future.
Focus Areas
- Bellwood Quarry Memorial
- Forced Labor Westside Memorial
- Chattahoochee Brick Company Memorial (in partnership with the City of Atlanta)
Racial Terror Awareness
The history of racial terror in Atlanta is not distant; it’s deliberate and still echoing.
Through educational campaigns, public art, and commemorations, we uncover histories that have been buried for too long, from the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre to the lynchings and attacks that shaped our city’s legacy of racial inequity.
Focus Areas
- 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre Mural
- 1906 Race Massacre Curriculum for Schools
Featured Projects
The Featured Projects showcase how communities are reclaiming history and shaping a more just future. From the Truth-Telling Fellowship, which uplifts grassroots historians and artists preserving suppressed narratives, to the National Summit on Transformative Memorialization, Unturning the Stones, these initiatives turn remembrance into a catalyst for change. Together, they model how truth can inspire action and repair.
Truth-Telling Fellowship
National Summit on Transformative Memorialization – “Unturning the Stones”
How to Participate
This work belongs to all of us. Here's how to get involved:
Sponsor
Support a program, mural, or fellowship to expand our reach.
Host
Bring Truth & Transformation events to your school, company, or community.
Attend
Join upcoming events and deepen your understanding.
Volunteer
Help build a memorial, document history, or support public sessions.
Resources
Coming soon: The Truth + Transformation Resource Hub, your guide for connecting truth-telling to real, lasting change.
“At the heart of truth-telling and remembrance work is the power of community.”
— Darrin Sims, Director of Truth + Transformation
Our Team
Darrin “DJ” Sims
Director, Truth & Transformation
BIOGRAPHY
As a community organizer, DJ has worked on several policy campaigns that allowed for early termination of probation for individuals and greater access to expungements for criminal records. He has also led a successful statewide campaign encouraging Black male civic engagement while also leading an anti-Capital Punishment campaign in Georgia.
DJ received a B.A. in Political Science and History from Fisk University, and a Master of Divinity from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology where he received concentrations in Race and Religion, Leadership in Church and Community, and Criminal Justice as well as a Certificate in Black Church Studies. His writing has been published in The Huffington Post, Facing South and The Journal for Law and Religion. DJ has helped strategize around social movements across the United States, Haiti and The United Kingdom. He is from St. Louis and currently lives in Atlanta.
Bria Goeller
Strategic Planner & Partnership Manager
BIOGRAPHY
Coming soon!
Ronald Bastien
Program Manager
BIOGRAPHY
Coming soon!