Recently I was in a retreat with colleagues in a committee leading a History & Reconciliation Initiative at St Paul’s Episcopal Church. This initiative has done ground-breaking work in uncovering and documenting the church’s central role in Richmond’s slave economy and in promoting the “Lost Cause” mythology. We came together to assess progress and to look at the challenges facing us […]

Hope in the Cities can trace its roots back to a relationship with Liverpool that began in 1983. Alfred Stocks, the city’s chief executive (city manager) and other Liverpudlians committed to the principles of Initiatives of Change invited us to bring an interracial group from Richmond to meet with local officials. As described in my book, Trustbuilding, Liverpool had experienced […]

A highlight of this week was a visit to Hill Farm, about an hour and a half drive from my sister’s home in Wenhaston, Suffolk.  My mother worked as a land girl there during World War II. In the mid-fifties our family spent several years in a cottage on the estate which was owned Peter Howard, the journalist and leader […]

We’ve just concluded the forum on Addressing Europe’s Unfinished Business (AEUB). Yesterday we heard Jo Berry, whose father was killed by an IRA bomb, tell how she met the man responsible for the bombing and how they have worked together to build peace. Two days after the bombing, she said, “I made a vow that I was not going to […]

We arrived at the international conference center for Initiatives of Change in Caux, Switzerland on Saturday morning. Our room has a spectacular view over Lake Geneva. There are 181 delegates here from 32 countries, most of them young people, who have come to begin a three-year exploration of the link between personal and collective identities in Europe, the rise of […]

Twenty-five years ago, Richmond took its first steps toward publicly acknowledging its traumatic history of slavery and racial oppression. On June 18, 1993, area residents of all backgrounds supported by representatives of 50 other cities and 20 countries walked together  (video in two parts) to mark sites previously too painful or shameful to remember.  In organizing the walk as part […]

We need a new approach to dialogue about race in this country, according to David Campt, one of the nation’s most experienced and innovative practitioners who once advised the White House. I first met him when we were working together on a dialogue guide for President Clinton’s One America race initiative. Over the past decade, in Campt’s view, the role […]

1968 was a momentous and turbulent year. In April, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. Riots broke out in cities across America. In June, Robert Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles.  Despite the gains of the Civil Rights movement, resistance to change was fierce, nowhere more so than in the housing market where real estate agents, banks and newspapers […]