Letter to My Children: Come To The TABLE!
/Dearest Beloveds,
Spring springs, oncology visits abate, and your mother dives a new community. I have become a member of Coming To The TABLE (CTTT).* I have barely begun to scratch the surface of this amazing organization and am already fluttering with excitement and potentialities, not least of which is volunteering all of us to assist with the Freedom Walk 2026.
250 years after 1776, activists will walk the 750 mile trek of the Underground Railroad, “following 19th century routes to freedom.” They are starting in 19 days. Beginning in Maryland, they are tracing the routes traveled by Harriet Tubman and so many other frightened, courageous, inspiring souls - through New Jersey, New York, and into Canada.
New York City is the halfway point for the 74 day pilgrimage on Memorial Day. We are going to be there as volunteers to honor the vision of the walk - our small ripple in the big pond towards addressing our country’s elephant in the room.
#FreedomWalk2026 envisions a nation where America’s unfinished story is completed to form a more just and perfect union. Uniting past and present we seek to re-ignite the ideals of “We the People”—sparking inspiration for future generations to secure equity, justice, and liberation for all.
The momentum about talking about this elephant is rippling everywhere it seems. In March, the UN passed a resolution urging reparations for slavery. America voted against it. Sigh.
Reparations for sure is a loaded term. I have received all sorts of interesting responses when I share with white people I am diving into the rabbit hole of reparations.
“What about the Irish?”
“It is too far back, everyone’s bloodlines are too diluted at this point. Who would qualify?”
“40 acres and a mule - what does that even mean these days?”
Usually I respond aloud with something along the lines of, “Well, it is a complicated issue.”
Internally, I am thinking of the succinct summary I read in The Little Book of Racial Healing: Coming to the Table for Truth-telling, Liberation, and Transformation: Today, white people and people of color fall on opposite ends of virtually all measurable social indicators, from infant mortality to poverty, unemployment, wealth, incarceration rates, education, housing, and health care.
A kinder response might be: Well, we are all trauma informed when in comes to race, as opposed to, Stop deliberately ignoring the facts!
And woof, such facts.
Thank you Reparations4slavery.com for this clear visual.
*Coming To The TABLE (Taking America Beyond the Legacy of Enslavement) was started in 2006 by members of the Hairston and Thomas Jefferson family to address the elephant in the room of our country. As Coming To the Table (CTTT) explains on their website:
Will Hairston is a white man who descends from one of the largest enslaving empires in the Old South. The story of his family’s complex web of relationships over many generations, from slave owners through the recent past, is told in Henry Wiencek’s book The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White.
…Susan Hutchison is the six-times-great-granddaughter of President Thomas Jefferson and his wife, Martha. In 2003, after exploring her family history—and its deep connection to slavery—she attended an unlikely family reunion as well. Hers was with the descendants of Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the woman he enslaved on his Monticello plantation and who bore several of his children. At the reunion, Susan met Henry Wiencek. Having experienced the power of reunion, she told him she wanted to meet other white descendants of families who had enslaved people.
Henry introduced Susan to Will. Together, they came up with the idea of a family reunion that was vastly different from what most people are accustomed to. It would not be a meeting of just one family. It would be a reunion that involved multiple families from both sides of the racial construct; a reunion of black and white—the descendants of people who were slaveholders with the descendants of those whom they had enslaved.
…They were inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, spoken from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963: ‘I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.’
Fired with resolve, Will and Susan invited their cousins to share another observation made by Dr. King: ‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.’ Under their leadership, black and white Jeffersons and Hairstons began planning a revolution. A group now known as Coming to the Table was born.
An experience was planned in which black and white descendants of ancestors linked by a slave/slave-owner relationship, a blood connection, or both could explore the history of slavery—its legacy and impact on their lives. They had a longer-term goal to create a model of healing to guide individuals and groups that continue to struggle with racism in the United States and throughout the world.
Forty-two years after Dr. King shared his dream, two dozen descendants from both sides of the system of enslavement gathered at the table…Through sharing stories and building relationships, the participants embraced King’s dream: They began to envision a more connected and truthful society that would be eager to address the unresolved and persistent effects of the institution of slavery.
