Summit on Race Matters in Appalachia 

The Summit will offer a unique opportunity for people from throughout West Virginia to participate in a constructive, in-depth conversation about the complicated history of race relations and racial inequality in the state. Participants will examine the causes and consequences of structural inequities that exist across social, political, education and financial systems and how those inequities negatively affect everyone. It will encourage strong leaders, working together, to commit themselves to building a community that improves the well-being of all West Virginians.

 The event will include a screening of “Cracking the Codes: Social Determinants of Racial Inequality” on Monday evening, November 10th and workshop discussions about this powerful movie on Tuesday, November 11th. The event will also feature keynote speakers, including Dr. Gail Christopher, Vice President for Policy and Senior Advisor, W.K. Kellogg Foundation; Mike Wenger, author of My Black Family, My White Privilege, and senior fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC; and Dustin Washington, Director of the Community Justice Program with the American Friends Service Committee.

Dr. Gail Christopher is vice president for policy and senior advisor at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and leads the America Healing initiative, to promote racial healing and racial equity in communities across the country. Dr. Christopher previously worked as Vice President of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies' Office of Health, Women and Families, a guest scholar in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution, and executive director of the Institute for Government Innovation at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Christopher has also received numerous awards, including the 2007 Leadership Award from the Health Brain Trust of the Congressional Black Caucus and the 2011 "Change Agent Award" by the Schott Foundation for Public Education. 

Michael R. Wenger is a senior fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the nation’s preeminent research and policy analysis institution focused on issues of race. He also is an adjunct faculty member in the department of sociology at the George Washington University and a consultant on race relations. He served as deputy director for outreach and program development for President Clinton’s Initiative on Race. He lives in Mitchellville, Maryland. 

Dustin Washington is the Director of the Community Justice program with the American Friends Service Committee, Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Public Health, Interim Manager of the City of Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative and a Core-Trainer with the Peoples Institute Northwest. Dustin coordinates the Tyree Scott Freedom School project in Seattle, Minneapolis and St. Louis, Youth Undoing Institutional Racism and leads a juvenile justice transformation project, End the Prison Industrial Complex (EPIC). Dustin’s work in Juvenile justice centers on interrupting the school to prison pipeline, developing a community based anti-racist restorative justice project for youth and stopping the construction of a new youth detention center.