
BLACK WOMEN'S TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION: A TRIBUNAL, NY
Archival Information
Black Women’s Blueprint's held the 2016 Tribunal of the Black Women’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, from April 28-May 1, 2016, as part of the International Decade of People of African Descent at the United Nations.
The Truth Commission reflected a continued process five years in the making, involving national grassroots activism, direct service healing practice and participatory action research by Black Women’s Blueprint and survivors across the country on sexual violence as a human rights atrocity against women and girls of African descent past and present, which has never been acknowledged or sufficiently addressed.
The Black Women’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was the first of its kind in the nation to focus on rape and sexual assault against Black women in the United States. Women and girls of African descent, many of whom were denied access and assistance from the criminal justice system, began to organize, realizing their own and collective transformation could not happen without public recognition and acknowledgment of the injustices and harms they had experienced. Out of these early discussions—first in New York City, and later in cities across the country such as Washington D.C., New Orleans, Mississippi, and Chicago—the BWTRC was born.
Our Mandates:
Truth. Justice. Healing. Reconciliation.
The Commissioners
Agunda Okeyo
Author, Writer, Activist,
Women's Media Center, Salon, The Daily Beast, and Indiewire
Alisa Del Tufo
Activist, Oral Historian, Founder
Threshold Collaborative
Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Black Feminist Scholar, Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s
Studies and English at Spelman College
Jamia Wilson
Movement Builder, Storyteller, and Feminist Activist
Executive Director, Women's Media Center
Lynn Rosenthal
Vice President for Strategic Partnerships at the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Former White House Advisor on Violence Against Women
Netsanet Tesfay
Consultant, International Labor Organization and International Organization for Migration
Ruby Sales
Civil Rights Activist, Writer, Mobilizer, Founder, Spirit House
Farah Tanis
TRC Chair, Co-Founder, Black Women's Blueprint and Museum of Women's Resistance
Alicia Garza
Activist, Speaker, Organizer, Founder
#BlackLives Matter
Amrita Kapur
Senior Associate, Gender Justice Program
The International Center for Transitional Justice
Ejim Dike
Executive Director
U.S. Human Rights Network
Loretta Ross
Human Rights and Reproductive Justice Advocate, Co-founder and 2005-2012 National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective
Monika Johnson-Hostler
Executive Director, NC Coalition Against Sexual Assault and National Alliance to End Sexual Violence
Quentin Walcott
Movement Maker, Anti-Vilence Activist, Co-Executive Director
CONNECT, NYC
Stephanie Colon
Community Organizer, Anti-Oppression Activist, Poet and Artist