While most people are aware that the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin, this historic legislation actually covers much more. The act has 11 sections called titles. Each title was aimed to provide access to help level economic playing fields. The five most far-reaching titles outlaw discrimination in voter registration requirements, public accommodations (i.e. restaurants, theaters and hotels), access to public property and facilities, public schools and colleges, and employment.

Civil rights leaders hoped that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would lead to racial equality and equity for Black, Indigenous and people of color, also known as BIPOC, and women. While there has been progress during the past 60 years, challenges still exist that have caused new generations to continue King’s fight for racial and economic justice.

BIPOC and women have made great strides in government, business, education and religious sectors. In 2020, Kamala Harris broke a glass ceiling when she became the first woman and woman of color elected as vice president of the United States. Today she is on the path to become the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.

Recently, Harvard University researchers found a rise in income mobility among Black people after examining census and tax records covering more than 50 million children over two generations.

However, a large wealth gap still exists. Black people have average incomes substantially less than their white counterparts. In the new book, “Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap,” co-authors Ebony Reed and Louise Story indicate that income mobility did not close the wealth gap. “The Black-white wealth gap still stands at 15 cents on the dollar, where it stood in the 1950s.” The book attributes this to economic discrimination embedded in America’s financial systems, which dates back to slavery and Jim Crow-era practices of redlining, unfair housing covenants, and racial and employment discrimination.

When we look at slavery from an economic perspective, it was designed to generate income and wealth for enslavers that could be passed down to their descendants, while keeping the enslaved and their descendants perpetually impoverished. Old money and houses passed down from slavery still benefit some white people today.

But there is potential to help level economic playing fields and heal racial wounds by truth-telling, reparative acts and increasing diversity and equity in the workplace.

In 2021, Lucy McCauley inherited the Wilmington, North Carolina, home of her great-grandfather. When she learned that his actions helped lead to the Wilmington Massacre of 1898, she sold the house and used the proceeds from the sale in a reparative way. She started a scholarship fund for African American students.

In 2022, Donna Melcher began a journey of racial healing that brought her to Williamsburg. Determined to look her family ties to slavery squarely in the face without whitewashing the uncomfortable parts, she stood before a crowd of more than 50 people, apologized for the harm her ancestors had caused and took tangible, reparative steps to make amends. “One day I will be somebody’s ancestor and I want to be the ancestor that got it right,” Melcher said.

In 2020, 56 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, Citigroup Bank conducted a study to put a price tag on racial discrimination over a 20-year period. The cost was a staggering $16 trillion! The good news from the study was that the U.S. economy could swell by $5 trillion over a five-year period by addressing the wage gap and promoting diversity within management ranks at banks and businesses.

When we come together to build a more diverse and just community, we all win!

Laura D. Hill is the executive director of the Virginia Racial Healing Institute, which manages Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle. Learn more about her work at varacialhealinginstitute.org.

This year’s event featured Tonia Merideth and the Rev. Robert W. Lee IV, descendants of the family of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Merideth shared an engaging PowerPoint presentation that chronicled her family history from the 1600s to the present. It was her first time publicly sharing the two-year journey that revealed her ties to Judith Armistead, Lee’s great-great-grandmother.

After her first visit to Williamsburg in 2013, Merideth knew she was destined to return. “I saw the name Armistead Avenue and recognized it as a family name,” she said. Years later she applied for a position as an oral historian for the Williamsburg Bray School Lab. The Bray School operated from 1760 to 1774 to educate free and enslaved Black children. Merideth creates oral histories of Bray School descendants. As fate would have it, she eventually discovered that some of her ancestors were enslaved students who had attended the school.

“I was angry at first,” Merideth said. But, after hearing a quote by William & Mary anthropology professor Michael Blakey, who said “Our ancestors did not toil for eight generations for us to forget about them,” she chose to transform her anger and pain to action by digging deeper. Learning her family history has been very therapeutic, Merideth said. “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.”

Unlike Merideth, Lee knew his family ancestry for most of his life. His name informed people of his famous ancestor wherever he went. He knew his great-grandmother was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and has childhood memories of her conversations being littered with racial slurs. He admitted to keeping a poster of General Lee in his bedroom as a teenager. He understood that he had a name and family legacy that millions of people recognized and honored.

After the 2017 Unite the Right rally — which protested plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee that stood in Charlottesville — claimed the life of Heather Heyer, Lee’s choices became clear. He could remain silent about violence and hateful rhetoric, or take a stand for racial justice. On Aug. 27, 2017, he stood before an audience of more than 5 million people during the MTV Video Music Awards to denounce racism.

The retaliation was immediate. “I lost a job, friends, income, and the possibility for career advancement,” he said. “Once I spoke out, I couldn’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.” Yet, in this life-changing moment in time, he had found his calling.

Today Lee speaks to people nationwide about eradicating racism and white supremacy. “There is a cure for racism. We can end it today,” he began.

“Think of it this way: If I have a cough and find myself wheezing and struggling to breathe, the cough, wheezing and struggling for air would not be described as the diagnosis, but rather the symptoms. The root cause of all these symptoms is undoubtedly my asthma. With proper care, medication and treatment, the symptoms can be kept at bay or eliminated entirely. Left unchecked, the root cause of asthma could kill me. This whole scenario I am describing is analogous to racism and white supremacy in the United States of America.”

Lee believes the symptoms of racism in America are Christian nationalism, the school to prison pipeline, inequality in housing and health care, and the elimination of diversity and equity initiatives on college campuses. He challenged listeners to stop turning a blind eye to racially motivated behavior and to “address racism head on wherever it presents itself. Silence is complicity. Silence is co-signing with white supremacy.”

Lee also stressed that we must commit to healing both the wounds that we have and the wounds we have caused. “This is our country’s potential for a great moment. There is a possibility for change,” he said.

The audience was captivated by Merideth and Lee’s presentations. Darrell Hairston, a keynote speaker for last year’s Journey to Racial Healing ceremony, traveled more than 200 miles from Martinsville to attend. “They were both bold and direct in challenging us to learn more and do more to bring people together,” Hairston said afterward. “I appreciated their stories and the impact those experiences still have on them today.”

When we come together to build a more truthful and just community, we all win!

Laura D. Hill is the executive director of the Virginia Racial Healing Institute, which manages Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle. Learn more about her work at varacialhealinginstitute.org.

As I write today’s column I am excited about both the upcoming Juneteenth festivities and about this column being published on June 14, my birthday! Recently I learned that I share a birthday with 19th century abolitionist and author, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

It was Stowe’s best-selling novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” that exposed the brutal realities of American slavery and fueled the abolitionist movement. This led to the Civil War and Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation that granted freedom to approximately 4 million people enslaved in Southern states.

As we prepare to celebrate Juneteenth, it is only fitting that we reflect upon the work of abolitionists such as Stowe, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Today’s celebration of freedom from slavery and oppression is the fruit of their labor.

The name Juneteenth is derived from the date June 19, 1865, when 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, to enforce compliance with President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The date was celebrated by African Americans for more than a century before becoming a federal holiday in 2022.

Juneteenth begins to hit home when we realize that the seeds of slavery and racial division were first planted here in the Historic Triangle, where Virginia slave laws were codified in the early 1660s. Two hundred years later Virginia would boast the highest population of enslaved people in Southern states. Its agriculture-driven economy yielded a per capita income in the top percentile of all states.

In 1860 more than 40% of the people who lived in the Historic Triangle were enslaved. African labor, skills and knowledge built and helped to keep William & Mary afloat. The school’s 1693 charter included a provision for slavery. The homes of several U.S. presidents, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were built by the people they enslaved.

Even as Virginia built a robust colony and state at the expense of enslaved African Americans to generate wealth, today state and local leaders have the responsibility to address legacies of slavery that are manifested in racial discrimination in education, health care, policing, employment and housing that still exist today.

Recently The New York Times reported that a white woman refused to sell her Virginia Beach home to a buyer who had offered the full price when she found out the buyer was African American. In the 1950s it was customary for home deeds to have restrictive covenants that denied home sales based on the buyers’ race and religion.

But it’s 2024! How do we stop fighting the same old battles and move forward?

We begin with a commitment to build bigger tables that include and value African American voices. Next, we help to organize and participate in honest discussions about racial issues in our community.

We also correct false historical narratives that have ignored, glossed over or romanticized the extreme suffering that African Americans have endured for centuries due to dehumanizing systems of slavery, Jim Crow and racial discrimination.

Finally, by acknowledging the racial history of our communities and taking tangible actions to repair the harms, we are choosing the path to racial healing, reconciliation and justice.

When we come together to create a more inclusive and just community, we all win!

Laura D. Hill is the executive director of the Virginia Racial Healing Institute, which manages Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle. Learn more about her work at varacialhealinginstitute.org.

The court ruled that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal; segregation in public education is a denial of the equal protection of the laws.” This decision overturned the 1896 Supreme Court’s ruling in the Plessy v. Ferguson case, which created the “separate but equal” doctrine that legalized racial segregation in public schools as long as facilities were equal.

However, separate was never equal. Local Southern school boards allocated the bulk of their budgets to educating white students, who were provided with school houses, transportation, new textbooks and supplies and extracurricular activities. A small fraction of school budgets was spent on the education of Black students.

While touring Black schools in the early 1900s, American educator Booker T. Washington once said, “Many of the places in the South where the schools are taught are as bad as stables.”

Washington would eventually influence Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears and Roebuck, to donate $25,000 to found a historically Black college called Tuskegee Institute, where the Tuskegee Airmen, the first World War II Black pilots, were trained.

Moreover, Washington convinced Rosenwald to invest more than $4 million to help rural Southern Black communities build approximately 5,000 state-of-the-art public schools to educate their children.

The schools became known as Rosenwald Schools, and were built between 1912 and 1937. By the 1950s, studies showed that Rosenwald schools helped to close the education gap by 40%. Famous graduates of Rosenwald schools included renowned poet Maya Angelou, Georgia Congressman John Lewis and civil rights activist Medgar Evers.

There were more than 300 Rosenwald schools built in Virginia communities, including in Suffolk, Gloucester and Cape Charles. Many of the school buildings were abandoned or repurposed following the 1954 Brown v. Board decision.

Today only 10% of Rosenwald schools still stand — remnants of a moment in history when people put aside racial differences to help educate one of society’s most vulnerable groups of people, Black children.

Washington and Rosenwald provided a blueprint for transcending race to work for the good of marginalized people in the community. It begins with building bigger tables. It involves offering people who don’t look like you a seat at the table, and calls for taking opportunities to reeducate yourself about America’s complex racial history. It ends with making tangible commitments to heal ourselves and our community by identifying historical harm and implementing reparative remedies.

Helping people to lay aside racial differences and “come to the table” to build relationships and community is the mission of the Virginia Racial Healing Institute. We create safe spaces where a diverse group of people can respectfully listen to one another’s truths, build trust and relationships and participate in community initiatives aimed at repairing the harm caused by centuries of systemic racism.

On June 22, we are partnering with the Let Freedom Ring Foundation and Williamsburg Christian Church for our third annual Journey to Racial Healing ceremony. This free community event brings together people with family ties to slavery to discuss their journey to racial healing. Our guests are the Rev. Robert W. Lee IV and Tonia Merideth, who are descendants of the family of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Mark your calendar and make plans to join us. There’s a seat at our “table” for you.

When we come together to build a more inclusive and just community, we all win!

Laura D. Hill is the executive director of the Virginia Racial Healing Institute, which manages Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle. Learn more about her work at varacialhealinginstitute.org.

A loud applause from the roughly 300 people who filled the Robins Foundation Theater welcomed Carter as she sat down with Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Executive Director Christy S. Coleman for an informal discussion. Carter was part of the 2024 Directors Series, where Coleman invites prominent scholars and public figures for thought-provoking conversations.

“The number one way Americans get their history is through film and television,” Coleman began. “Carter’s costumes are an American treasure of history and culture.”

Carter has 70 film credits and is a four-time Academy Award nominee. She was the first and only African American woman to win two Oscars for costume design for “Black Panther” and its sequel “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

Building resilience helped Carter find her calling as a costume designer and succeed in a position where African Americans make up less than 8% of the field. Moreover, she looks for opportunities to showcase the resilience of Africans in her costume designs.

She developed resilience as a college student at nearby Hampton University. She had caught the acting bug growing up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and initially majored in education before transferring to theater. When she did not receive a part in a college production she auditioned for, the director suggested that she make the costumes. Rather than get discouraged, Carter seized the opportunity and never looked back.

Carter credits learning to skillfully research characters to her work at Colonial Williamsburg, where she worked as an interpreter under the guidance of Rex Ellis, the former vice president of Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area. Carter thanked Ellis, who was in the audience.

Her first job was designing costumes for Spike Lee’s “School Daze,” which led to her work on a dozen of his films, including “Do the Right Thing,” “Mo’ Better Blues” and “Malcolm X,” the first film for which she received an Academy Award nomination.

Over the years, she has worked with A-list actors such as Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Eddie Murphy, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o and Samuel L. Jackson.

Carter’s second Academy Award nomination came in 1998 for designing costumes for the film “Amistad,” which was directed by Steven Spielberg, who is considered the most commercially successful director in American motion picture history.

Through her costume designs, Carter is helping people see American history through a more creative and authentic lens. She depicts resilience in her designs. Carter acknowledged that early Africans were stripped of their identity and culture, “but there’s resiliency in telling our stories,” she said. “There’s resiliency in a community that had everything taken away from them. Yet, there’s still vibrancy in the color palettes and they’re still giving you Africanism.”

Carter’s special traveling exhibit, “Afrofuturism in Costume Design,” brings history to life. It is on display at Jamestown Settlement through Dec. 1 and features 60 original designs from Carter’s films, including “Black Panther,” “Selma,” “Coming to America 2,” the 2016 remake of Alex Haley’s “Roots” miniseries, “Shaft” and “Do the Right Thing.”

When we come together to build a more welcoming and resilient community, we all win!

Laura D. Hill is the executive director of the Virginia Racial Healing Institute, which manages Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle. Learn more about her work at varacialhealinginstitute.org.

The equity report grades Williamsburg-James City County schools on academic achievement, discipline, gifted education services and teacher support. Based upon public data from the Virginia Department of Education and WJCC Public Schools, it aims to help community members understand the importance of equity and diversity, and to ensure the success of all students.

When my children were students in WJCC schools from 2004 to 2021, I had several issues with the school system and found myself constantly advocating for my kids by documenting my concerns in an email and then meeting with school officials. I attended the April 22 meeting to see if these issues have been resolved.

One of my major concerns was that Black students were underrepresented in gifted education, known as the Visions program. I had to insist that my kids be tested, identified and receive gifted education services.

Today it’s still an issue with Black students making up 18.4% of the student population, but only 5.7% were identified and received gifted services, the report said. On the other hand, white students made up 55.6% of the student population and were identified and received 77.2% of gifted education services.

When my daughter started kindergarten in 2007, there were no Black classroom teachers, just a handful of teachers’ aides. I met with her principal to discuss my concerns about the underrepresentation of Black teachers. “Children need to see people in authority that look like them,” I said. He responded by assigning a Black student teacher to my daughter’s class. A couple of years later, a Black vice principal was hired.

The equity report revealed that there is a “crisis level shortage of teachers of color,” most notably at James River Elementary School where 77.2% of the student population are students of color, yet only 4.2% of the teachers are people of color.

As a volunteer at my children’s elementary and middle schools, I noticed disparities in how some students were treated and disciplined. Black and Hispanic students were sent to the principal’s office for minor infractions that white students were given a pass for. Today the racial disparities have continued with Black, Hispanic and mixed-raced students making up 43% of the student population and 76% of the long-term suspensions.

As for academic achievement, the report found widening gaps based on race and socioeconomic factors that have grown to the double-digits. “I wish the findings were different,” lamented Jacqueline Bridgeforth Williams, founder and executive director of the Village Initiative. “We have seen this for six years in a row.”

After the presentation, parents, teachers and community leaders shared their thoughts about how to repair the school system.

“We should not be afraid to call out racism as the root of the problems,” one concerned citizen said.

Concerns about racism in WJCC’s school system are nothing new. In 2020, a group of students from Jamestown High School started the Racial Equity Student Alliance. They shared with the WJCC School Board the hostile racial experiences that middle and high school students suffered. But as the students graduated, the group fell by the wayside.

As I listened to the feedback to the report, I pondered the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” This calls for the entire community to “build bigger tables” to create an environment and experiences that allow all children to thrive.

When we come together to build a more equitable and just community for our children, we all win!

Laura D. Hill is the executive director of the Virginia Racial Healing Institute, which manages Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle. Learn more about her work at varacialhealinginstitute.org.

Our special guest was Lacroy Nixon, founder and director of Slam Connection, a relatively new spoken word poetry collective based in Williamsburg.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. The major difference between poetry and spoken word poetry is that spoken word poetry, or “slam poetry,” is meant to be performed, Nixon explained as he began his presentation.

I thought about Amanda Gorman, the young poet laureate who captured the hearts of millions of people when she recited her poem “The Hill We Climb” during President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration. Weeks later, her poem would be published in a book titled “The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country,” followed by a best-selling collection of her poems.

Gorman’s success caused people to look at poetry differently. Spoken word poetry has gained popularity nationwide, particularly in Virginia. Nixon attributes this to several factors, including the coronavirus pandemic. “The pandemic hits and we can’t go to open mics. Everything came to a standstill. So now people are looking for avenues to come together again. Slam poetry is empowering because it provides a creative way to think and express thoughts and frustrations in a positive way,” said Nixon, who goes by the stage name “Atlas.”

Like Gorman, Nixon is 26 years old and a force to be reckoned with. His poetry is reflective and powerfully delivered. A 2015 graduate of Warhill High School, he also graduated from Liberty University with a degree in graphic design in 2020. He had planned to join a creative consulting firm to design logos and brands for major companies. Slam poetry was an accidental profession.

“We started a year ago,” he said. “My team and I were looking for a way to change the community by using spoken word poetry and different forms of verbal art as a means for community action.”

In addition to competing in spoken word competitions, Nixon teaches young people about poetry writing and performance. Through Slam Connection, he has developed a curriculum certified by Writers Guild of Virginia, offers a spoken word poetry program at Warhill High School and hosts workshops and a quarterly open mic series at the Williamsburg Regional Library.

At the Coming to the Table meeting, Nixon was joined by Breanna Dobson, a fellow poet. They treated us to two poems. Nixon’s poem, titled “Spooky Stuff,” had a civil rights theme, while Dobson’s poem, “Barbie,” dealt with perceptions of women’s bodies and role expectations.

After a brief Q&A period, it was time for Coming to the Table leaders and members to share their favorite poems.

I chose a poem by renowned Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. In his famous poem “Mother to Son,” Hughes compares the challenges of life to trudging up a flight of stairs. Written in African American dialect, it depicts a mother describing her journey to overcome life’s obstacles and encouraging her son to persevere.

Well, son, I’ll tell you:Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.It’s had tacks in it,And splinters,And boards torn up,And places with no carpet on the floor —Bare.But all the timeI’se been a-climbin’ on,And reachin’ landin’s,And turnin’ corners,And sometimes goin’ in the darkWhere there ain’t been no light.So, boy, don’t you turn back.Don’t you set down on the steps.’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.Don’t you fall now —For I’se still goin’, honey,I’se still climbin’,And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was noted for referencing themes of “Mother to Son” in his speeches as he inspired our nation to advance forward, rather than backward. Still a timeless message for today.

When we come together to build a more welcoming and inclusive community, we all win!

Laura D. Hill is the executive director of the Virginia Racial Healing Institute, which manages Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle. Learn more about her work at varacialhealinginstitute.org.

I still remember that fateful day when I received a letter from Coming to the Table’s national office that said my application for a Historic Triangle chapter was approved. It wasn’t until I read the letter for the second time that I noticed the date, April 4 — the same date as the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Racing thoughts began to flood my mind.

First I thought about the racial unrest that King’s death unleashed. There were riots and destruction in cities nationwide.

I thought about how more than 50 years after his death, our nation is still grappling with racial injustices that King stood against.

I thought of Coming to the Table’s vision to fulfill King’s dream that “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

I thought the longest about how our new local Coming to the Table chapter would make an impact on the Historic Triangle community.

I could not have imagined that a year later, our nation would once again be thrust into racial unrest. The 2020 murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor unleashed a national and global outcry unlike anything I have ever witnessed in my lifetime. Hundreds of Confederate statues were removed, including the one that stood in Bicentennial Park in Williamsburg.

When the Historic Triangle chapter was organized in 2019, there were 30 Coming to the Table groups. Today there are approximately 50 chapters nationwide. This demonstrates that people are ready to have civil conversations about America’s complex racial history, as well as to improve modern day race relations.

In its first five years, Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle focused on community engagement. We started by instituting programming that has grown to become annual community events. In 2020 we organized the first Greater Williamsburg National Day of Racial Healing to join communities nationwide in raising awareness about the need for bringing a diverse group of people together for collective action. Another annual event that began in 2020 is the Heal Greater Williamsburg/Heal the Nation Community Day, which gives community leaders an opportunity to participate in a forum to share what they are doing to promote healing. In 2022, the Journey to Racial Healing Ceremony was introduced to honor people who are seeking to acknowledge and heal from their family’s ties to slavery.

Along the way, we worked with Williamsburg city leaders to help create the first-ever Williamsburg Truth and Reconciliation Committee; introduced an award-winning Building a Bigger Table column; began the Table Builders Awards to recognize people and organizations that are building bridges to unite our community; and launched the nonprofit Virginia Racial Healing Institute.

Over the next five years, Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle will continue to focus on “building bigger tables,” working collaboratively with government, business, education, nonprofit and faith-based communities and offering monthly programs and annual events to facilitate discussions about local and national racial issues.

Our upcoming events include partnering with James City County on a community memorial service to celebrate the life and legacy of Col. Lafayette Jones Jr. on April 28. On April 22, Coming to the Table will be featured on the popular local radio program “Making A Difference Monday” to discuss how we are making an impact on the Historic Triangle. I hope you will tune in to FM 93.5/THE BURG at 2:30 p.m. or join our upcoming community event. There’s a seat at our “table” for you!

When we come together to build a more truthful and just community, we all win!

Laura D. Hill is the founder of Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle, which is managed by the Virginia Racial Healing Institute. Learn more about her work at comingtothetable-historictriangle.org.

For those who did not have the pleasure of knowing him, Jones had a heart for local history. He served on the James City County Historical Commission for many years. When he heard that the county was planning to develop his family’s ancestral land, he intervened. He advocated for Freedom Park, home of one of the oldest free Black settlements in America, to tell his ancestors’ story by recreating cabins and building an interpretive center for artifacts.

I met Col. Jones for the first time on Feb. 22, 2020, at Freedom Park’s Interpretive Center when Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle and the James City County Parks and Recreation Department partnered on a Black History Month program. Jones spoke about his book, “My Great, Great, Grandfather’s Journey to an Island of Freedom in the Middle of Slavery,” while Coming to the Table leader Bill Sizemore discussed his book, “Uncle George and Me: Two Southern Families Confront a Shared Legacy of Slavery.”

Jones was a walking encyclopedia about his family history, which he traced back to the 17th century when his ancestors came over from England as indentured servants. He shared stories that his great-grandfather and father passed down about Bacon’s Rebellion, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. His face lit up when he shared maps and photographs that chronicled the complex history of Freedom Park.

I crossed paths with Jones again in 2022 while I was serving on Williamsburg’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee. One thing he taught me was the importance of reclaiming history to tell the stories of how African Americans lived, worked and were educated in the Historic Triangle.

As the founder of Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle, the local chapter of a national racial reconciliation organization, his thoughts resonated with me. You see, it’s through telling the stories of our family histories — even the painful ones — that we begin to heal from racial wounds of the past. This benefits the community by helping to make reconciliation possible and by restoring community trust.

Fortunately, there is a national movement to reclaim history by preserving stories of people, places and buildings, especially those that serve as monuments to the struggles of African Americans. Many of the buildings no longer exist, so when you find one intact, it’s a newsworthy event.

Last month, a local reclamation project that Jones had family ties to garnered national media attention. The Bray School, one of the oldest schools in the United States for free and enslaved Black children, was featured on the “Today” show. The Bray School operated in Williamsburg from 1760-74. The discovery of the building on the grounds of William & Mary was confirmed in 2020. In 2023, it was moved to Colonial Williamsburg, where it is being restored and slated to open this fall, the 250th anniversary of its closing. Jones was a member of the Bray School’s descendant community.

Another historical building that Jones was linked to is the Amblers House, a 19th century antebellum home. In 2015, while Jones was serving on James City County’s Historical Commission, the Amblers House was recognized as a Virginia and National Landmark. In 2022, Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle organized a community forum on the lawn of the Amblers House. Leaders from the Bray School, the Lemon Project, Village Initiative for Equity in Education, the Let Freedom Ring Foundation, Colonial National Historical Park and the Virginia Center for Restorative Justice gathered to share their commitment to uncovering forgotten history.

While it saddens me that Jones is gone, I am comforted by knowing that his rich legacy of reclaiming history still lives on.

When we come together to build a more truthful and inclusive community, we all win!

Laura D. Hill is the executive director of the Virginia Racial Healing Institute, which manages Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle. Learn more about her work at varacialhealinginstitute.org.

Progress is synonymous with women. Women have moved our nation forward for more than 150 years. Freedom fighter Harriet Tubman galvanized the abolitionist movement. Susan B. Anthony led the suffrage movement. Rosa Parks’ decision to be jailed rather than give up her bus seat invigorated the Civil Rights Movement. In modern times, women have been at the helm of the feminist, Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements.

Greater Williamsburg’s celebrations of women’s history have not disappointed. They began with a week of events that started on March 1 with the “Power of Women” luncheon sponsored by the Greater Williamsburg Chamber of Commerce. This sold-out event featured Connie Matthews Harshaw, president of the Let Freedom Ring Foundation. Her address focused on reaching young women to help them understand what power looks like and how to use it wisely.

“The power of women is we plan; we are resilient; we tell the truth; we recognize the need to collaborate to get things done; and we have choices,” Matthews Harshaw said to the packed audience, which included members of the Girl Scouts, Jack & Jill and the Lafayette High School girls basketball team.

On Thursday, Virginia Peninsula Community College hosted “Celebrating Women Forging Our Future,” a leadership development workshop moderated by VPCC President Towanna Porter Brannon. It featured a diverse group of women leaders, including Jennifer Smith-Brown of J. Smith McDonald’s, My Lan Tran of the Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce, Lauren Moore of the Greater Williamsburg Chamber of Commerce and Gaby Lopez Rengifo of the Hispanic Chamber of Coastal Virginia.

The week culminated with the International Women’s Day celebration held Friday at William & Mary. Nearly 100 women gathered at W&M’s School of Education for a full day of programs designed to educate and celebrate women. The event came together through the efforts of two women, Leandra Parris and Ti’Juana Gholson, who were seeking to build a bigger table.

Gholson, who leads the nonprofit Inner Peace Coalition, explained: “We were chatting one day and I asked Dr. Parris (dean of diversity and inclusion for the School of Education) if she’d be interested in collaborating and doing an event that encourages, rejuvenates and empowers women. We started putting our heads together and developed a full program to include educational topics on business, finance, health care, social justice, multilingualism, gender equality and more.”

The “and more” included arts and crafts stations, blood pressure, blood sugar and blood cholesterol screenings and networking opportunities with panelists and other participants.

The long-awaited day began with a 10 a.m. keynote panel titled “Breaking the Glass” featuring Amber Price, president of Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center; Brannon of VPCC; and Terry Banez, president of the Greater Williamsburg Chamber of Commerce. All three were the first women in their positions. They discussed leadership, societal changes and what is necessary to empower women in the future.

When asked about how their organizations are living up to the International Women’s Day theme of investing in women, Price said she is taking a trauma-informed care approach for staff. “I am known as the CEO who gives doctors hugs. I also have a women employee resource group.”

Banez said she provides chamber staff with mentoring, leadership training opportunities and a free gym membership. Brannon provides coaching and mentoring and offers a president leadership series. She encouraged women to “be brave and have frank and honest conversations about issues.”

After breaking for a catered lunch, there were afternoon sessions that included something for everyone — topics included religion and spirituality, education, business, women’s health, economics and finance, and gender and sexual identity.

I was honored to serve as a panelist for a discussion titled “Leading Social Change” along with community leaders Harshaw and Johnette Weaver. As I prepared for the discussion, a quote by Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was tossing around in my mind. It summed up the first week of Women’s History Month.

“Women are leaders everywhere you look — from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women, and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes.”

When we come together to create more equitable and just communities, we all win!

Laura D. Hill is the executive director of the Virginia Racial Healing Institute, which manages Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle. Learn more about her work at varacialhealinginstitute.org.