In 1959, Prince Edward County, Virginia, closed all its public schools to avoid integration. Classes did not resume until 1964. No other jurisdiction in the US has ever taken such action. The white elite quickly established a private academy for their own children, using resources from the closed schools and vouchers provided by the state. Meanwhile, 1,700 black children were […]

Initiatives of Change has always stressed the connection between personal change and change in society. It is at the core of our vision and mission. Our global website states: “Initiatives of Change (IofC) is a world-wide movement of people of diverse cultures and backgrounds, who are committed to the transformation of society through changes in human motives and behavior, starting […]

Virginia and Virginia (Ginny) are both in their nineties. They live in the same retirement community in Richmond, VA. Both of them have been part of the work to build trust across divides for more than 50 years. When my wife and I visited them for lunch this week they brought the latest copy of our newsletter with sections marked […]

Recent polls indicate that white and black Americans believe race relations are bad and nearly half think they are getting worse. In a New York Times/CBS poll just over 60 percent of whites and 68 percent of blacks take this view – a dramatic increase from surveys conducted just after Obama’s first election victory.   Interestingly, while only 37 percent […]

Early on April 3, 1865 shortly before Union troops entered Richmond, Richard Gill Forrester, 17-year-old free African American, ran to the Virginia State Capitol and raised the US (Union) flag. Four years earlier, when Virginia seceded from the Union, Forrester, who worked as a page at the Capitol, rescued the flag and hid it safely in his home after he […]

Across the globe humanity is on the move on a vast scale, driven by war, terrorism and religious persecution as well as the desire for a better life. A UN report released this week puts the number of displaced people at 60 million. The total number of migrants reached 232 million in 2013. This number will surely escalate and most […]

Twenty years ago Richmond was a city “starkly divided along racial lines” and “congenitally resistant to change of any kind,” according to Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, who joined the city council in 1994. He went on to become mayor, lieutenant governor, and then governor. African Americans had won control of the city council in 1977, unsettling the white establishment, now […]

History is complex and ambiguous. No one is more aware of this truth than John Franklin, a senior manager at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Franklin’s ancestors were taken to Oklahoma as slaves of Native Americans. In 1831, thousands of Cherokees, Muscogees, Seminoles, Chickasaws, and Choctaws were forcibly relocated from their homelands in southeastern […]

One of the most memorable moments in the film Selma shows the civil rights activist Annie Lee Cooper (played by Oprah Winfrey) along with other peaceful demonstrators standing at the steps of the Selma courthouse demanding the right to vote. Sheriff Jim Clark pokes her with his nightstick at which point Cooper punches him. She is tackled and thrown to […]

President Obama thanked Pope Francis for his role in bringing the US and Cuba together. He said his “moral example shows us the importance of pursuing the world as it should be, rather than simply settling for the world as it is.”A mark of moral leadership is holding up a vision and encouraging others to overcome their differences to embrace […]