Descendants of Enslaved Communities at the University of Virginia

Descendants of Enslaved Communities at the University of Virginia DEC-UVA is an independent nonprofit organization established in 2020 by descendants of the enslaved.

Last up for our Facilitator Series, but certainly not least, we've got a few powerhouses lined up to talk about Genealog...
09/19/2026

Last up for our Facilitator Series, but certainly not least, we've got a few powerhouses lined up to talk about Genealogy, Land, and Archives. This panel is going to cover some integral pieces of not just the work that DEC does, but within archival work across mediums.

To steward this discussion we've got DEC-UVA board member Nicka Sewell-Smith, Samantha Dorm of Friends of Lebanon Cemetery, and Tim Roberts of Black Star Cultural Resources.

🌳 Nicka Smith is a host, consultant, and documentarian with more than 20 years of experience as a genealogist. She has extensive experience in researching the enslaved and their communities and is an expert in genealogy research in the Mississippi Delta.

Nicka has diverse and varied experience with a background in audio, video, and written communications. She’s appeared on TODAY, Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, two episodes of the series Who Do You Think You Are, was featured in the groundbreaking short film, A Dream Delivered: The Lost Letters of Hawkins Wilson, and has been interviewed by National Geographic, TIME, USA Today, and New York Times. She is the host of BlackProGen LIVE, an innovative web show with more than 130 episodes focused on people of color genealogy and family history.

Additionally, Nicka is the family historian and lead researcher for the Atlas family of Lake Providence, East Carroll, Louisiana and guides and coaches an active group of family historians at the Who is Nicka Smith Patreon community.

🌳 Samantha L. Dorm is a senior grant consultant with 25+ years of experience serving public safety and nonprofit organizations.

A preservation advocate, she serves on the York County History Center Board, co-founded Friends of Lebanon Cemetery, and leads initiatives honoring African American veterans and the women of the 6888th Battalion.

🌳 Timothy Roberts is the founder of Black Star Cultural Resources, supporting cultural heritage stewardship, interpretation, and regulatory compliance through applied archaeological and historical research. He also serves as secretary of Friends of Sons and Daughters of Ham, a nonprofit stewarding a historic African American cemetery in western Henrico County.

Drawing on archaeology, archival sources, and digital mapping technologies, Tim investigates contexts and experiences of historic landscapes to illuminate human connections to place through time.

🌳🌳 If you haven't already, you have just a few more days to get your tickets to the symposium for NEXT SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26: https://bit.ly/DECDD2026

Movement towards community building and liberation often includes collaboration between activists and institutions. To t...
09/18/2026

Movement towards community building and liberation often includes collaboration between activists and institutions.

To talk us through the questions surrounding this topic, Jordy Yager from the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and Devon Williams of the Country House Project are joining us NEXT WEEK on September 26!

🌳 Jordy Yager is an award-winning journalist and Director of Digital Humanities at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center in Charlottesville. He helps lead the JSAAHC’s Center for Local Knowledge, which advances community-based reparative public history.

As a journalist, Yager was the executive producer of Monument Lab’s Plot of Land podcast and co-wrote and directed Raised/Razed, an Emmy and Telly Award winning film about Charlottesville’s Vinegar Hill neighborhood.

🌳 Devon Williams is a cultural practitioner, genealogist, and nonprofit founder whose work centers on descendant-led historic preservation and community self-determination.

She serves on the membership committee of the Descendent of Enslaved Virginians UVA and is the founder of The Country House Project (TCHP), a 501(c)(3) organization committed to bridging knowledge and resource gaps for underserved communities seeking to reclaim and steward their ancestral homeplaces.

🌳🌳 Time is getting slim, don't forget to get your ticket while you can: bit.ly/DECDD2026

Building community is vital for our survival, not only as a means of connection, but for our movement towards liberation...
09/17/2026

Building community is vital for our survival, not only as a means of connection, but for our movement towards liberation. Thanks to Jamal Taylor from the , we'll have the opportunity to dig into this concept at our symposium NEXT SATURDAY!

🌳 Jamal Taylor is the Membership Insights and Collaboration Strategist at the Black Liberation-Indigenous Solidarity (BLIS) Collective.

He is a community organizer, data strategist, and movement researcher whose work centers building collective power through evidence-informed, values-aligned analysis and action.

Grounded in his experience as a community organizer, Jamal approaches data and technology as a tool for strengthening movements, supporting shared strategy, and advancing solidarity across issues and communities.

🌳🌳 Don't miss out - snag your ticket today: bit.ly/DECDD2026

Kori Price (Kori Price Photography), Dr. Dawn Johnson, and Dr. Nneka Dennie are leading the upcoming session Black Women...
09/16/2026

Kori Price (Kori Price Photography), Dr. Dawn Johnson, and Dr. Nneka Dennie are leading the upcoming session Black Women As Keepers of Collective Memory.

🌳 Kori Price is a multidisciplinary artist, photographer, and writer based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Originally from Culpeper, Kori has been proud to call Central Virginia home for most of her life and is passionate about telling the stories of her community.

Kori has shown work in multiple group and solo exhibitions, was a Spring 2026 Fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies (ICJS), has been a writer in residence at McGuffey Arts Center, an artist in residence at New City Arts, served as a former host of CreativeMornings Charlottesville, and co-founded the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective (CBAC) where she currently serves as their president. Through her involvement with CBAC, Kori has co-curated seven exhibitions and served as an art consultant and project liaison for the installation of almost two dozen works in the Kindlewood community.

🌳 Dr. Dawn Johnson is Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

As a scholar of Black feminism and digital culture, her work explores the intersections of race, gender, media, and power. She is committed to advancing critical conversations about representation, democracy, and social change.

🌳 Dr. Nneka D. Dennie is an award-winning Black feminist historian. She is Associate Professor of History, core faculty in Africana Studies, and affiliate faculty in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington and Lee University, where she teaches classes about African American and Caribbean history.

Her first book, "Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Black Radical Feminist", is an anthology about Shadd Cary: an abolitionist, suffragist, and the first Black woman newspaper editor in North America.

🌳🌳 Memory is an important aspect of our histories, our storytelling, and our archival work. To hear more about how these experts lean into this idea of collective memory, join us for this year's symposium STILL HERE: Black Survival, Joy, and Community at America's 250th: https://bit.ly/DECDD2026

We're beyond excited that More Than A Fraction is joining us for our upcoming symposium, STILL HERE: Black Survival, Joy...
09/11/2026

We're beyond excited that More Than A Fraction is joining us for our upcoming symposium, STILL HERE: Black Survival, Joy, and Community in the 250th.

Kerri Moseley-Hobbs and Shawn Turner from More Than A Fraction will be taking the lead on a session focused on the The Freedman's Bureau Project, titled Breaking The Codes: Navigating Virginia's Black Codes will be taking the lead on a session focused on the The Freedman's Bureau Project, titled Breaking The Codes: Navigating Virginia's Black Codes.

🌳 As Executive Director of the More Than A Fraction Foundation Dr. Kerri Moseley-Hobbs has a more than 20-year career in postsecondary education policy, regulation, and administration, as well as experiential learning and historical research. She is also the author of a creative non-fiction book “More Than a Fraction: Based on a True Story”.

🌳 Shawn Turner is an Educational Consultant at the More Than A Fraction Foundation helping to ensure that the Foundations work can translate into effective educational content and delivery. Shawn is an educator and instructional leader with expertise in curriculum development, mathematics education, and teacher coaching.

Don't miss your chance to learn about Freedman Codes in real-time. Register today at the link in our bio.

09/11/2026

Register before tomorrow!! Link in Black History Museum of Virginia- open Wed thru Sat 10am to 5pm bio.

Virginia Homecoming: Returning to Place is a two-day experience inviting families, descendants, and Run Richmond 16.19 participants to discover their Virginia roots and reconnect with the people and places that shaped our shared history through genealogy, storytelling, and interactive experiences.

The journey begins at Black History Museum of Virginia- open Wed thru Sat 10am to 5pm and leads into Run Richmond 16.19, connecting participants to the history they will encounter along the race route.

It opens Friday, September 11th, with our free panel discussion, Returning to Place: Why Our Family Stories Matter, 2:30 to 3:30 PM. Details on the flyer, link in Black History Museum of Virginia- open Wed thru Sat 10am to 5pm to register!

Made possible by the 400 Years of African American History
Commission (400 Years of African American History Commission) in partnership with the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia, setting the stage for the Djimon Hounsou Foundation’s (Djimon Hounsou Foundation) 5th Anniversary Run Richmond 16.19 weekend. Panel presented in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

09/10/2026

DEC Board Member Karice LB featured on 60 Minutes!

For our upcoming symposium STILL HERE: Black Survival, Joy, and Community in the 250th, local experts Renate Yarborough ...
09/09/2026

For our upcoming symposium STILL HERE: Black Survival, Joy, and Community in the 250th, local experts Renate Yarborough Sanders and Shelley Murphy will give us a How To session on genealogy.

🌳 Renate Yarborough Sanders is an accomplished genealogy researcher and educator, who specializes in teaching African American research methodology and beginning DNA principles.

Renate develops comprehensive genealogy curricula, teaching researchers to exhaustively analyze historical records "top-to-bottom, side-to-side, and corner-to-corner" to uncover family footprints. Renate authors two blogs, a funeral program database, and is an active member of many genealogical and historical organizations.

🌳 Shelley Viola Murphy, aka “familytreegirl,” is a Virginia-based genealogist researching African American and European ancestry. She teaches at MAAGI, belongs to DAR and multiple genealogy organizations, and serves on several historical boards.

A national speaker, she shares problem-solving methods through her “So What” principles. You can read more at her blog,amilytreegirl.com.

🌳 Have you been wanting to learn more about genealogy basics? Secure your seat today: https://bit.ly/DECDD2026

We're back with our share out of this year's DEC Descendants Day Symposium facilitators! This year's theme STILL HERE: B...
09/05/2026

We're back with our share out of this year's DEC Descendants Day Symposium facilitators!

This year's theme STILL HERE: Black Joy, Survival, and Community is one that will uplift our successes, as well as how we've gotten through the traumas.

To guide us through those methods will be Amanda Lynch of Rethinking Resiliency, based in Richmond, and Shelly Wood of The Women's Initiative in Charlottesville. They both joined us last year, and we are so grateful they'll be be back for a Part Two.

🌳 Amanda is a writer, theorist, and community leader whose work examines how individuals and communities repair after rupture. Her approach centers a maternal and ancestral lens and is grounded in the belief that belonging is ecological. Through her writing and facilitation, she explores how lineage, memory, environment, and relationship shape the healing process.

She speaks statewide through the Virginia Department of Corrections Victim Witness Speakers Bureau, bringing visibility and dignity to the long arc of healing after homicide, and is developing Healing Theory, a framework that explores trauma. Amanda founded Rethinking Resiliency to advance this work through writing, facilitation, and systems-level engagement.

Amanda is currently completing her EdD in Community Care and Counseling with a focus on traumatology.

🌳 Shelly is a Clinical Services Director and Therapist, holding an MSW from VCU and BIS from UVA. She utilizes multiple modalities in a trauma-informed approach as a therapist and clinical services director at The Women’s Initiative.

Shelly is passionate about serving her community, especially through community education programs like monthly Wellness discussions at JABA’s Mary Williams day center.

🌳 Don't miss out on these two. Get your tickets at the bit.ly link here: https://bit.ly/DECDD2026

We're back to share a couple more of our facilitators for this year's Descendants Day Symposium, STILL HERE: Black Joy, ...
09/02/2026

We're back to share a couple more of our facilitators for this year's Descendants Day Symposium, STILL HERE: Black Joy, Survival, and Community.

Creating art has been present throughout history, and is a way we've not just expressed ourselves and survived, but told stories and resisted our conditions. On September 26, we'll have artists MaKshya Tolbert and Lanecia Rouse to share their perspective and experience.

🌳 MaKshya practices poetry and placekeeping in Virginia, where her grandmother raised her.

Her debut poetry collection, Shade is a place, meanders east–west along Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, seeking “a Black sense of place” at the pace of stressed shade and street trees, the mall’s architectural history, and the speaker’s fragile inner life.

She is currently a Fireline Fellow with the Long-Term Ecological Reflections Program (2024-2027), and is the Associate Editor in Poetry for Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE). In her free time, she is elsewhere.

🌳 Lanecia is an artist based between Richmond, Virginia, and Houston, Texas, whose multifaceted practice encompasses collage, abstract painting, photography, and curatorial work with non-profit organizations.

She approaches art as a space to notice, to gather and to reconsider the narratives that shape us and the ones we choose to carry forward. Through collage, she re-contextualizes photographs, family archival materials, found objects, and abstracted language. Language operates in her work as both mark-making and verse, contributing to the visual and conceptual layering of each work.

In addition to previous participation in several other exhibits and residencies, Rouse serves as Artist-in-Residence partner at Holy Family HTX Episcopal Church, where she guides the curation team for the Lanecia A. Rouse Gallery, and sits on the Board of Directors for Image Journal and 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA.

🌳🌳🌳

We're thrilled to have both of these creatives join us this month! Don't miss your chance to chat with them in-person -- get your tickets today: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/still-here-black-survival-joy-and-community-at-americas-250th-tickets-1987948139399

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