Recently I joined more than a dozen community members and leaders who gathered at the Maximum Building for “Conversation on Education,” a conversation on the Williamsburg-James City County School Board hosted by school board members Kimberley Hundley and Randy Riffle.

After a presentation that focused on how the board operates, we gathered in a circle for a Q&A period to discuss issues that community members have about the school board, how books are selected for public school libraries and communication channels for resolving conflicts.

Another program, “Race, Religion and Education: the Path Forward,” sponsored by Saint John Baptist Church and the NAACP Religious Affairs Committee, brought together local educational and church leaders to discuss how race, religion and education intersect and how we can move forward. Moderated by Lawrence Gholson, president of the York-James City-Williamsburg branch of the NAACP, the program was attended by more than 60 people who were treated to a tasty dinner and a forum featuring Maureen Lee Elgersman, director of the Bray School Lab, Crystal Lassiter, the Rev. Carlon Lassiter and the Rev. Jeffrey Smith. The forum was so enlightening it’s returning on Oct. 23 by popular demand.

Two other noteworthy community conversations that occurred early this year are the “Commonwealth Conversations,” presented by the Greater Williamsburg Chamber of Commerce and The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and “Let’s Talk Civics” educational series, sponsored by Inner Peace Coalition, NAACP’s political action committee and the Ladies Impacting Professional Systems.

“Commonwealth Conversations” was a five-part series aimed at bringing together influential leaders with the Williamsburg-area business community for dialogue. The session I attended focused on economic growth and development and featured Jason El Koubi, president of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the state economic development authority.

During the “Let’s Talk Civics” educational series, I gained insights about the Virginia General Assembly and role of both delegates and lobbyists in getting legislation passed.

The series provided a blueprint for how to connect with local delegates to get your voice heard. A discussion led by Jackie Glass, a local Virginia delegate, kicked off the series.

There are a myriad of community programs scheduled for this fall including the fifth annual Heal Greater Williamsburg/Heal the Nation Community Day.

This event started in October 2020 as a Colonial Williamsburg rally co-sponsored by Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle and Williamsburg Action. We joined forces to bring local leaders together to discuss what their organizations were doing to facilitate racial healing during a climate of national social unrest. In 2022, the format and name was changed to make the event more far-reaching, interactive, educational and family-oriented. Additionally, the location changed to James City County to reflect the commitment to serving Greater Williamsburg.

“It’s a relaxing day to bring people together to enjoy family-friendly activities and to participate in community discussions and workshops to provide tools to have civil conversations about racial issues,” said board member Fred Liggin, who will lead a community forum about Jewish and African American collaborations on civil rights issues.

It’s been more than 60 years since Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel stood with the Rev. Martin Luther King to advocate for civil rights to end racial injustices. Heschel once said, “Racism is man’s gravest threat to man — the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.”

There’s a seat at the table for you for this courageous conversation! I hope you will join us. When we come together to build a more welcoming and inclusive community, we all win!

Laura D. Hill is the founder and director of Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle, a program of the Virginia Racial Healing Institute. Learn more about her work at www.varacialhealinginstitute.org.

Like millions of people, I stayed up late to catch her acceptance speech, which started at approximately 10:30 p.m. Regardless of political affiliations, tuning in was the opportunity to watch history in the making!

One of the concerns about Harris is that people feel that they don’t know her. So it was only fitting that Harris began her speech by sharing her origin story, which explained her heritage, family dynamics and the events and circumstances that shaped her values and career.

Harris expressed pride in her parents, Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan, Jamaican and Indian immigrants who came to the U.S. in the early 1960s to attend the University of California at Berkeley. They fell in love and married in 1962. Kamala was born on Oct. 20, 1964, roughly 3½ months after the Civil Rights Act was passed. Could they have ever imagined that on the 60th anniversary of this landmark legislation, their daughter would be one step away from becoming president of the United States?

Like millions of children, Harris dealt with the childhood trauma of her parents’ divorce. She was raised in a single-parent household with a “village” that included family friends who helped to nurture and inspire her to move forward.

However, her mother, who would become a biomedical scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was the greatest influence in shaping her work ethic and determination, which helped Harris to become resilient in the face of adversity.

She taught Harris to “never complain about injustice, but do something about it,” Harris said. Her father encouraged her to be fearless. She recalled that he would say “Run, Kamala, run. Don’t be afraid. Don’t let anything stop you.”

And look at what she did!

After graduating from law school, Harris began a legal career as a district attorney, to stand up for the vulnerable. “A harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us,” she said.

This fueled Harris resolve to stand up for women and children against “predators who abused them,” “for homeowners facing foreclosure against big banks,” “for veterans and students being scammed by big, for profit colleges,” “for workers being cheated out of wages” and “against cartels that traffic in drugs and guns and human beings.”

However, her early career as a prosecutor was just the start. Today Harris is one of the most qualified presidential candidates in U.S. history. In 2021, she was elected vice president of the United States — the first woman vice president and highest-ranking woman official in U.S. history. Prior to her election, she served as a U.S. senator representing California from 2017 to 2021. Before her election to the Congress, she was the attorney general of California.

Yet, she says her accomplishments do not drive her political aspirations. She is driven by the desire to unify a country that is being torn apart by divisions, which are political, racial and religious.

Today conservatives are viewed as bent on deregulation of government, politicizing religion and dismantling progress made by Black people, women and people of color. Meanwhile, progressives are perceived as socialist because they are pushing for government regulation, stricter gun control and anti-discrimination laws and LGBTQ+ rights.

Harris aims to unite the country to fulfill our highest aspirations. Unity begins with first recognizing the humanity in everyone and working toward healing wounds that have been festering for centuries. Our mission at Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle is to bring diverse people together to foster healing and reconciliation. There’s a seat at our “table” for you.

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

Laura D. Hill is the founder and director of Coming to the Table-Historic Triangle, a program of the Virginia Racial Healing Institute. Learn more about her work at varacialhealinginstitute.org.

What defines a “Black job?”

That’s the question millions of people are asking this summer after former president Donald Trump said that “millions of people that President Joe Biden allowed to come in through the border” are coming for “Black jobs.” Last week, Trump doubled down on this incendiary comment during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists.

Historically, the litmus test for a “Black job” was any low-paying position that was labor intensive, service-oriented or manual that most white people didn’t want to do. For men this included field hands, sharecroppers, garbage collectors, railroad porters, groundskeepers, butlers and custodians. For women it was farming and “the help” positions of maids and housekeepers.

The concept of “Black jobs” dates back to the 1600s after English colonist John Rolfe began experimenting with growing tobacco in Virginia. Rather than growing the bitter native tobacco that the Powhatan tribes grew, around 1612-1613 Rolfe grew and harvested a pleasant and sweeter variety using Spanish tobacco seeds that he brought to Virginia.

Working in tobacco fields during hot, humid Virginia summers was strenuous and grueling work for the English. However, growing tobacco commercially provided a sustainable, money making commodity. Rolfe’s success enabled tobacco to become the cornerstone of the 17th century economy, causing House of Burgess member William Byrd I to deem tobacco as the “savior of the Virginia colony.”

A few years later, on Aug. 20, 1619, a large ship arrived off the coast of present-day Hampton, Virginia, carrying what English colonist John Rolfe described as “nothing but 20 and odd negroes.” Little did Rolfe know that these Africans and their descendants would transform Virginia’s and the South’s economies.

Tobacco was not foreign to the first Africans, who were believed to have been brought from Angola. They were introduced to growing and smoking tobacco in their native land by the Portuguese in the 1500s. In Virginia and throughout the Southern states, enslaved African men and women would labor from sunup to sundown in fields growing tobacco and other agricultural commodities.

Today there are still vestiges of American slavery’s impact. Just walk through your workplace, airports and businesses that you patronize and look around. Black people and other people of color are still working disproportionately in housekeeping, maintenance, cafeterias and other service positions. This is partly due to centuries of systemic racism and racial discrimination in employment that denied access to higher education, higher skilled and higher paying positions.

In 2022, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Isabel Wilkerson addressed more than 300 women during William & Mary’s Women’s Weekend. Wilkerson shared a painful story about her father, who graduated from Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) and served as a distinguished Tuskegee airman during World War II. After the war, he and his fellow airmen were denied opportunities to work as pilots. Pilots were not considered Black jobs. Black men supposedly lacked the necessary intelligence, leadership and coordination to be pilots.

Last week during the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, Simone Biles made history as the first U.S. gymnast to win two individual all-around gold medals. She also led the U.S. women’s gymnastics team to a gold medal in the team finals. Biles posted on social media the next morning, “I love my black job” — signifying that Black jobs can be anything one’s mind can conceive.

It’s time to redefine the way people look at Black people and jobs. Black people have held positions as governors, local, state and federal legislators, and vice president and president of the United States. We serve as district attorneys, local, state and federal judges and U.S. Supreme Court justices. Black people are educators, college professors and administrators, and school board members nationwide. There are Black business owners, as well as leaders and founders and directors of nonprofit and faith-based organizations.

Let’s commit to building bigger tables to let our common denominators, not our differences, define us.

When we come together to build a more diverse and welcoming 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.

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.