ONLINE: Racism & Reparations – Isthmus

press release: The Racial Justice Ministry Team & MOSES Team (criminal justice reform) present:

Racism and Reparation:  A two-part series of education and reflection

A free Zoom program presented by the FUS Racial Justice Ministry Team & MOSES Team (criminal justice reform). We encourage all to attend both presentations, but not required.

March 27 @ 6:30 pm: “Black on the Wisconsin Frontier, 1725 to 1866”

with Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara

Dr. Clark-Pujara is an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Afro-American Studies.  Her research focuses on the experiences of black people in French and British North America in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. She is particularly interested in retrieving the hidden and unexplored histories of African Americans in areas that historians have not sufficiently examined—small towns and cities in the North and Midwest. Those who have taken the “Black History for a New Day” course will be familiar with Dr. Clark-Pujara’s revelatory work and engaging presentations. Her program for FUS will feature research from her forthcoming book Black on the Midwestern Frontier: From Slavery to Suffrage in the Wisconsin Territory, 1725—1868, which examines how the practice of race-based slavery, black settlement, and debates over abolition and black rights shaped white-black race relations in the Midwest.

March 29 @ 6:30 pm: “Reflections on Reparations”

with Rev. Leslie Takahashi

Leslie Takahashi is lead minister at Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church in Walnut Creek California.  She is co-author of The Arc of the Universe is Long:  Unitarian Universalists, Anti-Racism and the Journey from Calgary, as well as a contributor to numerous other anti-racism publications. From 2017-2020 she chaired the UUA’s Commission on Institutional Change “Widening the Circle of Concern.”  FUS members will remember Rev. Takahashi’s well-received sermon at FUS on April 12, 2021 “What We Can’t Unknow.”  Her program on March 29 will help us “learn about the history of our own institutions and the models of redress being discussed and advocated for by Black people.”