Prof. Yohuru Williams faced a tall task: How, in a single speech, do you set the stage for a decade-long, faith-based initiative of truth telling, education, and repair with Native American and African American communities in Minnesota?
Williams, an author and Founding Director of St. Thomas University’s Racial Justice Initiative, was one of two keynote speakers invited by the Minnesota Council of Churches to help launch its effort: Truth and Reparations: Dismantling the Structures and Repairing the Damage of Racism in Minnesota.
The talk, given Sept. 25 at Plymouth Congregational Church, brought in many voices from the struggle: James Baldwin, Isabel Wilkerson, Frederick Douglass, Stokley Carmichael and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It included a number of historical and personal stories as metaphors for our current work of addressing racism.
His talk would return to a central theme: “Good words are not enough.”
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