UNC Asheville’s 8th annual African Americans in Western North Carolina & Southern Appalachia Conference

UNC Asheville’s 8th annual African Americans in Western North Carolina & Southern Appalachia Conference returns on November 6th. This virtual event will feature keynote speakers and panel discussions connected to this year’s theme: Reparations, Revelations & Racial Justice: The Path Forward. The event is free and open to everyone.

Attendees of this year’s conference will hear from esteemed speakers from Asheville and from around the country. Guests include Keith Young, former councilman and the architect of Asheville’s reparations legislation along with other equitable policies; Lori Decter-Wright, an Oklahoma councilor of southeast Tulsa’s District 7; Robin Rue, a former 5th Ward alderman who served the City of Evanston, IL during the passage of the nation’s first municipal funded reparations legislation; Syndi Scott, founder and director of The Amendment Project, a student-led grassroots organization advocating for reparations for Black and Indigenous Americans; Dwight Mullen, professor emeritus from UNC Asheville and one of the University’s first Black professors; Gholdy Muhammad, the bestselling author of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy; and many more.

The event opens with a keynote address on local reparations followed by a panel on reparations across the nation. The mid-day session focuses on a talk and panel focused on reparations and education justice followed by presentations from UNC Asheville faculty presenting the initial findings from the Urban Renewal Archival Database and Lost Black Wealth Study plus an examination of redlining and historic preservation in Asheville. The Black in Black on Black virtual exhibit tour will explore the lives and contributions of Black/African American communities in WNC, and closing the event will be an address from Dwight Mullen on regional reparations.

Register for this free conference through Remo.

For more information, including a full schedule of speakers and events, visit aawnc.unca.edu