HARRISONBURG, VA. – Dee Gully and Destinee Karim, both 17, said they had little interest in history or the civil rights movement before being chosen ...More
August 15th, 2011
HARRISONBURG, VA. – Dee Gully and Destinee Karim, both 17, said they had little interest in history or the civil rights movement before being chosen for an unprecedented tour of 1960s-era sites in the South, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders changed the course of history. “Knowing what I do now makes me appreciate what children my age went through ...More
Twenty high school students from Mississippi will travel in July to commemorate the journeys of many African-American and European-American pioneers of the American civil rights movement. The event, called Writing a New History Civil Rights Youth Pilgrimage, is being planned by “Coming to the Table,” a program of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) at Eastern Mennonite Uni ...More
An event billed as “a frank discussion of race relations in the United States” will be held 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 13, at Hyattsville Mennonite Church, 4217 East-West Highway, Hyattsville, Md. The program, co-sponsored by the Hyattsville congregation and the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) at Eastern Mennonite University, will bring together Phoebe Kilby, a descendant ...More
David Works, Shay Banks-Young and Julia Jefferson Westerinen are joining past award winners Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and Muhammad Ali in receiving the 2010 Common Ground Award. For over a decade Search for Common Grounds (SFCG) has been conferring this award to honor achievements in conflict resolution, negotiation, community building, and Peacebuilding. Works, Banks-Young a ...More
CNN’s May 20, 2010 coverage of the EMU/CJP project Coming to the Table has drawn national attention to a groundbreaking program centered around peacebuilding, reconciliation, and the legacy of slavery. The CNN feature highlights the budding connection between family members Betty and Phoebe Kilby. ...More
Betty (left) and Phoebe Kilby, descendants of slaves and slave owners, connected in 2007 and are part of Coming to the Table, an EMU/CJP program devoted to healing the wounds of slavery and its aftermath. ...More
Amy Czajkowski, program director of Coming To the Table Amy Czajkowski‘s experiences as a facilitator in peacebuilding goes beyond countries devastated by war. As ...More
When David Works traced his family roots back to Thomas Jefferson, he learned that some of his relatives were descendants of slaves. Works, who is white, learned that he has black cousins, and he wanted to meet them. That sent him and his family on a years-long journey of mending race relations. ...More
EMU Seminar Helped Works Rebuild Life By Tom Mitchell, Daily News-Record David Works speaks in university chapel Friday, Sept. 18, on his decision not to pursue revenge for his daughters’ murders but to work toward re ...More
By Calvin R Trice Times-Dispatch Staff Writer Monday, January 30, 2006 Joe Hairston, who links his ancestry to a slave on a North Carolina plantation, attends a candlelight service at Long’s Chapel. HARRISONBURG Joe Hairston spent his weekend mingling with descendants of the family that enslaved his ancestors. He came away feeling more hopeful about race rela ...More