The History of the Black Experience Summit at Elms College

8^th Annual Black Experience Summit

Harambee: A History of Cultivating Black Togetherness through Food Justice
Date: February 21, 2025
Keynote Speaker: Crystal Wilkinson
Link to Program

Centuries-old traditions surrounding food, including its nourishment, production, and consumption, were central to community-building within Black communities in the United States and across the Diaspora. These traditions included cherished recipes passed down through generations, cultural celebrations, kitchen gardens, community farms, free breakfast programs, and advocacy for food sovereignty. Each of these practices reflected the importance of cultivation as an intentional and sustainable effort. Inspired by the Kenyan concept of Harambee, a Swahili word meaning “all pull together,” the 8th Annual Black Experience Summit focused on the theme of togetherness within the food justice movement, highlighting how Black communities worldwide actively cultivated an ethic of equitable care. Harambee also distinguished the professional learning community of educators who comprised Elms College’s Center for Equity in Urban Education (CEUE), which celebrated its 5th Anniversary. Planting the seeds of culturally responsive knowledge production and cultivating minds were shared commitments of both the CEUE and the annual Black Experience Summit.

Elms College welcomed Kentucky Poet Laureate Crystal Wilkinson, the award-winning author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a lyrical culinary journey that explored the hidden legacy of Black Appalachians through powerful storytelling and recipes from five generations of country cooks. Wilkinson served as the Bush-Holbrook Endowed Professor and Director of the Division of Creative Writing at the University of Kentucky. Also headlining the Summit’s distinguished panel was Bronx-based advocate Karen Washington. She was a farmer and founder of Rise and Root Farm, a board member of the New York Botanical Garden, former president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition, and co-founder of Black Urban Growers (BUGS) and La Familia Verde Garden Coalition.

7^th Annual Black Experience Summit

Forging Democracy: Black Womanhood and the Long March for Civil Rights
Date: February 23, 2024
Keynote Speakers: Dr. Brittney Cooper and Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson.
Link to Program

As we honor the 60th anniversary of key moments in the Civil Rights Movement—including the Voting Rights Act—we also look toward an election year in which many scholars argue that democracy itself is on the ballot.   The 7th annual Black Experience Summit seeks to make visible the pivotal and foundational role that Black women have played in forging, defining, defending and preserving the very fabric of U.S. democratic ideals and practices, modeled the world over.  Black womanhood—uniquely situated at the intersection of race, gender, class and sexuality—offers a particular sensibility that reflects the everyday, radical acts of love, survival, community-building, and resistance aimed at dismantling structures of oppression and refashioning a more just nation overtime. This multigenerational knowledge and wisdom provide each of us, especially our young voters, with an indispensable blueprint for civic engagement in the long march toward liberation.

6^th Annual Black Experience Summit

Embodying Faith, Seeking Racial Justice
Date: February 24, 2023
Keynote Speakers: Dr. Shannen Dee Williams and Olga Marina Segura
Link to Program

The sixth annual Black Experience Summit: Embodying Faith, Seeking Racial Justice, explores the impact of racism in the life and mission of religious institutions. Keynote speaker Shannen Dee Williams, Ph.D. explores how Black Catholic sisters struggled to expose the rampant discrimination, misrepresentation and erasure that existed historically within the U.S. Catholic Church. These courageous women used their particular roles as educators and social justice warriors to seek equality and integration within the larger struggle for Black liberation. An interfaith panel will discuss how faith practitioners raise their voices to exemplify the pivotal role that places of worship could play to eradicate racism and white supremacy both internally and externally.  Keynote speaker Olga Marina Segura addresses how contemporary movements for Black liberation, such as Black Lives Matter, are not only consistent with the social justice teachings of the religious faithful, but also continue to challenge the ongoing marginalization and invisibility of racial justice. The Summit will close with a call to action.

5^th Annual Black Experience Summit

Stories of Our Becoming, The Shoulders on Which We Stand
Date: February 17, 2022
Keynote Speakers: Dr. Gina Athena Ulysse and Dr. Treva Lindsey.
Link to Program

In its fifth year, the Black Experience Summit is an annual event bringing students and scholars across Western Massachusetts together to educate and inspire within the larger mission of Elms College. Our theme this year: “Stories of our Becoming: The Shoulders on which we Stand” explores the multiple histories, and the stories told about those histories, which inform the black experience today—their diversity, their silences and their inextricable link to black liberation and social justice movements.

4^th Annual Black Issues Summit

3^rd Annual Black Issues Summit

Housing, Health and Education: Basic Human Rights
Date: February 28, 2020
Keynote Speakers: Denise Jordan, M.S., Savina Martin, M.S., D.H.L., Frank Robinson, Ph.D., and Dr. Yves Salomon-Fernández.

Elms College honored the final days of Black History Month by bringing social justice advocates to campus Friday. Elms College in Chicopee held its third annual Black Issues Summit to raise awareness on the most pressing issues affecting the black community. This year’s theme was “Housing, Health, and Education: Basic Human Rights.”

“Issues of racial justice, environmental justice, social justice, we are seeing the young people, the Gen-Z, the millennial, and even Gen-Alpha really having an interest in these issues and wanting to reverse some of the adverse impact that my generation and others may have had.”

Yves Salomon-Fernandez, President of Greenfield Community College: “I think we have made much progress since the Fair Housing Act of 1968,” Executive Director of Springfield Housing, Denise Jordan noted. “We still find people of color that although they have equal rights they have problems with people they live next to.” When native of Haiti, Dr. Harry Dumay, became president of Elms College three years ago, he began the Black Issues Summit. He told 22News, “Elms College is about promoting social justice and what we can do to better the world around us.”

Friday’s summit brought in a sizable audience of Elms College students and faculty members.

2^nd Annual Black Issues Summit

Equity, Empowerment, Community, and Excellence
Date: February 15, 2019
Keynote Speakers: Shirley Edgerton, Richard Haynes, Dr. Djanna Hill, and Dr. Toussaint Losier.
Link to iObserve article
Link to Program

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the College of Our Lady of the Elms hosted its second annual Black Issues Summit in celebration of Black History Month from noon to 4:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 15, in the Alumnae Library.

Diversity is an integral component of the Elms College experience. Guided by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the college hosts multicultural activities and events throughout the year. Each February, the college celebrates contributions that members of the black community make to society.

This year’s Black Issues Summit will once again bring national scholars specializing in a range of subjects to Elms for important dialogue with the college’s students, faculty, and staff, as well as the general public, about issues affecting the black community. The summit’s theme will be “Equity, Empowerment, Community, and Excellence,” with a focus on striving for equity “as we move toward justice for all.”

“The purpose of the Black Issues Summit is to provide an opportunity for meaningful dialogue about pertinent issues affecting the black community,” said Alaina DiGiorgio, director of diversity and inclusion at Elms. “This summit is a one-day gathering to openly examine and candidly discuss the numerous and complex issues surrounding the black community.”

In the spirit of interdisciplinary studies, the summit is open to everyone who is interested in issues of social justice, equality, and diversity. community, and Excellence.