University of Lynchburg will host Central Virginia’s fourth annual Race, Poverty, and Social Justice Conference on Saturday, November 5. Community leaders, students, advocates, and activists will gather to gain a deeper understanding of how to create a more equitable community.
Workshops will cover topics such as community policing, restorative justice, racial health disparities, and more. The conference is sponsored by Many Voices, One Community (MVOC), University of Lynchburg, and the University of Lynchburg Department of Sociology and Human Services.
Conference check-in and a light breakfast will begin at 8 a.m. in the lobby of Schewel Hall. The program begins at 9 a.m. in the Sydnor Performance Hall.
Registration is $20 for adults; the fee includes lunch. Students with a College ID may attend without charge. A limited number of scholarships are available. Register online at www.LynchburgTickets.com. For more information, visit www.mvocva.com, email mvocva@gmail.com or call 434.455.3964.
Dr. Kim Forde-Mazrui, an expert on equal legal protection, will deliver the keynote address, “Black Lives Are All Our Lives: Reframing our Constitution’s Commitment to Racial Equality Based on Justice and Empathy.” Dr. Forde-Mazrui serves as a law professor and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Law at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. At UVA, he has twice received an award for service to the Black Law Students Association, and the university selected him as the winner of the 2013 John T. Casteen III Diversity-Equity-Inclusion Leadership Award.
Dr. Tamura Lomax, an educator, writer and social justice advocate, will serve as a special guest panel moderator will be. She received her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Religion where she specialized in Black Religion and Black Diaspora Studies. She co-authored Womanist and Black Feminist Responses to Tyler Perry’s Cultural Productions and is presently writing Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Black Religion and Black Popular Culture for publication by Duke University Press.
Created in 2007 and formerly known as the Community Dialogue on Race & Racism, Many Voices, One Community has as its mission the creation of a racially equitable community.
