About - Toward Unity: A 2023 Memory Parlor

For a relatively quick summary of our Memory Parlor, click here .
Read below for a longer explanation !

To visit archives of our past Memory Parlors, visit here.

What is a "Memory Parlor"? Simply put, it is an interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and international space in which participants get "work done" on their memories. At Memory Parlors, we connect fragmented narratives pertaining to peace, human dignity, law, history and philosophy, under the protection and shelter of beauty. And we believe that in so doing, we decrease alienation and increase connection, belonging, harmony and understanding . Our Memory Parlors are inspired by the Lyceum Movements of the 19th Century, in both the U.S. and Europe. These adult education movements allowed for "social intercourse and the exchange of intellectual products." A "Memory Parlor" is also a nod to the earlier "Suffrage Parlors" that were crucial to earlier efforts to raise consciousness about women's full participation in society. Our Memory Parlors acknowledge the need for spaces to cultivate our understanding of morally relevant history. A foundational principle of our Memory Parlors is that history is narrative of past ethics, and is indispensable for charting the course towards a better horizon.

To visit archives of our past Memory Parlors, visit here.

Title page of Ham Sok Hon's speech, "We Must, But Cannot, Resort to Revolution." Access the Korean language version of the speech here.

"Toward Unity" is the 2023 "Memory Parlor" sponsored by the Cora di Brazzà Foundation. It will be held in Philadelphia, PA, the city of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, and at the breathtaking Philadelphia Masonic Temple. We will meet on July 19-20, 2023, which marks the 175th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention and the Declaration of Sentiments of 1848.
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There are two conceptual anchors of "Toward Unity". The first is the 175th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 in which a vision was laid out that was inspired by earlier "Declarations of Sentiments", including the 1833 Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society and the 1838 Declaration of Sentiments of the New England Non-Resistance Society (pictured on this page). Philadelphian and Quaker Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) is an important throughline to all three Declarations, and to the interconnected movements of which they are a part. Lucretia Mott also provides an important link to the 1923 proposed Constitutional Amendment that was named in her honor, the Lucretia Mott Amendment, which is today better known as the Equal Rights Amendment. 2023 is also the 100th anniversary of the Lucretia Mott Amendment.

The second conceptual anchor for "Toward Unity" is a 1959 speech by Korean philosopher, poet, peace and democracy activist, Ham Sok Hon (1901-1989). Little known in the U.S., Ham Sok Hon, a Korean quaker sometimes referred to as "The Gandhi of Korea" provides a powerful framework which blends Eastern and Western thought. A typed English translation (by Ha Poong Kim) of one of Ham's essays titled "We Must, But Cannot, Resort to Revolution" is held by the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College.* In this essay , Ham exhorts us to move "toward unity." 2023 is also the 75th anniversary of the Republic of Korea in the South, which solidified the division of the Korean Peninsula into two different countries after being unified for over 4000 years. Ham Sok Hon was born in what is now known as "North Korea", but migrated to the South where he worked on behalf of Peace and Democracy.

* Ham Sok Hon's essay "We Must, But Cannot, Resort to Revolution" can be read in Korean here. 하나됨에로!

Click the diamond near "The Thinking Woman" to learn more about our Memory Parlors.

Watch the 3 minute promo video for "Toward Unity" below: