Community Practice Board
The Community Practice Board is responsible for creating and supporting the development of a community for individuals and families who are exploring their connection to slavery and its legacies. They are responsible for representing perspectives of the community of descendants and others committed to addressing the legacies of slavery to inform CTTT programs, events and activities. Members of the Board are listed below.
Susan Hutchison is a co-founder of Coming to the Table and Coordinator of the CTTT Community Practice Board. She is a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and many other southern slaveholders. Susan treasures her several-year relationships with Hemings/Jefferson cousins, as well as more recent connections with African American cousins related through a slave holding ancestor from Mississippi. She leads groups on listening, emotional healing, and parenting, and lives in Seattle, WA with her husband and son.
Betty Kilby is the author of her historical autobiography ‘Wit, Will & Walls” and public speaker. She speaks about racial healing, diversity, education, women’s issues and issues affecting the African American community. Betty was involved in a historical movement that opened the door for all races of people to be equally educated together in Warren County. She was an infant plaintiff in the case of Betty Ann Kilby vs. Warren County Board of Education. She earned an Associates degree in Business Management; Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and an MBA with a concentration in Productivity Improvement in the Workplace.
- Rev. David Pettee has slave-holding ancestors from New England on both sides of his family. In 2007, he traveled to Ghana to research an ancestor who participated in the slave trade. Upon his return, Pettee was able to make contact with descendants of an African enslaved by his family.
- Holly Fulton is from Providence, Rhode Island, and has worked as a trainer and teacher of French, ESL, and diversity awareness. In 2001 she participated in a life-altering trip that retraced the triangular slave-trading business of her DeWolf ancestors from Bristol, Rhode Island. She uses a documentary film, Traces of the Trade, about this trip to facilitate discussions at a variety of venues. She now lives in Concord, California.
- Phoebe Kilby works for Eastern Mennonite University as a fundraiser for the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, the sponsor of Coming To The Table. She has researched her family’s history of slaveholding and was able to trace those slaves to modern-day Kilbys. One of them, Betty Kilby Baldwin, was a pivotal figure in integration of Virginia’s public schools. Kilby believes we are walking a journey together to uncover and explore the truths of our experiences and the possibility of racial reconciliation.
- Patricia Moncure Thomas was born in Chicago, grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and received graduate degrees in education and school administration. She is the principal of Browns Point Elementary in Tacoma, Washington. Her goal is to uncover and document untold stories about the legacy of slavery that have been left out of our United States history––stories, she says, that connect everyone as important parts of American and world history.
- Arthur Treherne Carter attended the inaugural Coming To The Table gathering sponsored by Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding as an observer. He has facilitated presentations on “The American Institution of Enslavement: Truth and Reconciliation” at Eastern Shore Community College in Virginia and participated in subsequent Coming To The Table events and Summer Peacebuilding Institute training workshops at Eastern Mennonite University. Carter also facilitates Eastern Shore Truth and Reconciliation gatherings and discussions at churches.
Shay Banks-Young is a national speaker on racial harmony and genealogy. She is a multi-media specialist who produced a public affairs television program entitled Generational Harmony. She is also the Creator/Producer and Director of Africa: A First Experience a multi-arts and audiovisual program on the cultural and educational experiences of traveling through 8 African countries.
Committees of the CPB
The Coming to the Table Committees serve as pods of interest that support the larger work of the Community Practice Board and the Coming to the Table program.
