PROJECT

Coming to the Table: Healing the Legacy of Slavery in the United States

In the News

Listen to Ed Gordon describe Coming to the Table on NPR’s News and Notes

CNN's "In America" series features Coming to the Table

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This program, housed at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, will support activities through the end of 2011 to further develop and apply a model of healing from the legacy of slavery.

Coming to the Table was founded to support African-American and European-American descendants whose ancestors were linked by a “slave/slave-owner” relationship, to build relationships, and to explore their own and America’s collective legacy of slavery. The program name “Coming to the Table” comes from Martin Luther King’s historic March on Washington speech referring to a time when “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners would be able to sit down at the table of brotherhood.” The project seeks to fulfill his vision in the spirit he expressed—that of brotherhood and sisterhood, of accountability and reconciliation.

This effort began with two sets of connected families, the Hairstons and Jefferson/Hemings. Both “white” and “black” family members developed alliances in their desire to face history and move toward healing and wholeness for themselves and their communities. To move this dream from concept to reality, these descendants engaged the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University.

This program marks the second phase in the Coming to the Table initiative, which will widen its reach to communities in Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia, and Michigan. The program will work primarily with direct descendants of enslavers and those who were enslaved, to create a model with symbolic significance and interest to the broader population. Once the program is further articulated and studied, the process will be applied to organizations, communities, and families in the hope that it will contribute to a national process to support healing from the legacy of slavery, and making things right.

This work is done to create a positive legacy for our children, who can grow up without the burden of history and the cycles of violence.