Sally Hemings, #MeToo - a reflection

Producing/organizing "At the Crossroads: Activating the Intersection of Art and Justice" isn’t just an artistic or intellectual pursuit for me. The issues, voices and questions raised are deeply personal to me, to collaborators, and, I believe to attendees - because though there is often joy, beauty and sometimes even laughter in the room – these events are not entertainment. Especially at the Long Table conversations. Sometimes I leave them overwhelmed and require a couple of days processing to “get out of my feelings.” This has never been truer than with the "Sally Hemings, #MeToo: A Long Table Conversation and Installation."

The “Sally Hemings, #MeToo” event started with a contemporary interrogation of historical events and figures and ended with the raw pain of Sally's spiritual descendants in the room in ways that I did not anticipate as I was setting up earlier that day. They gave voice to experiences that were either triggered by the artistic and media provocations or which were so fresh they hovered just below the surface of their daily existences.

As I curated the program, I tried to bring Sally Hemings and Recy Taylor in the room because of their bravery and for their inspiration but my biggest takeaway is that we live among many Sally’s and Recy’s and they deserve our respect, empathy and opportunities to tell their stories. Without them any depictions of the state of our community are incomplete.

As my friend and colleague Reenah Golden often says, “we press on.”