Please mark your calendar for the first of three educational programs to be sponsored by the ad hoc Committee on Race and Racism as we move forward on developing an action/implementation plan for Richmond Friends Meeting.

Ana Edwards, a public historian and faculty member at Virginia Commonwealth University who has been in the forefront of efforts to build a memorial park in Shockoe Bottom, site of one of the nation’s largest slave markets, will be our guest speaker. Edwards is chair of the Sacred Ground Reclamation Project and a founding member of the Defenders for Freedom, Justice, and Equality, which focuses on prison reform, education, and social justice.

She will speak and answer questions on Saturday, May 11, from 10 – 11:30 am at the Meetinghouse with light refreshments to follow. The program will be available on Zoom and in person.

Edwards subject is “Progress and Pushback: The Challenges of Changing a Race-Based Society.” Here is its description:

Richmond was founded as another trading center during Virginia’s colonizing era and began to come of age as a southern political center following the Revolutionary War. Slave labor and race-driven social policies were well established and controversial enough by the start of the new nation in 1783 to be hotly debated at the legislative level–even as Black people hoped and struggled for freedom–from then until slavery’s abolition in 1865. This session will use the event known as Gabriel’s Rebellion to explore Black life and aspirations in the new republic’s entrenched slave society, and the impact of this era on life today.