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.

View Key Findings from the BWTRC Survey

The Commissioners

The 2016 DIGITAL RECKONING CAMPAIGN

The Digital Reckoning Campaign is a call-and-response digital project grounded in the concept of reconciliation for Black women with Black men, white men, white feminists, and other people of color to acknowledge the ongoing, complicit oppression of Black women. From descendants of slave owners coming to terms with the sins of their ancestors to Black men admitting to remaining silent and not showing up for Black women who continue to be brutalized, Black Women's Blueprint calls for a dynamic dialogue on Black women’s pain and struggles. We hope to feature a myriad of intergenerational voices responding to violence against Black women.