Overview

How can we calculate the cost of centuries of oppression? How can Black citizens be made whole after the injustices of slavery, Jim Crow laws, redlining, and the myriad physical and economic forms of prejudice that they and their families have faced? What reparative systems can be created to heal the harm caused by the subjugation of Black communities, in New Jersey and elsewhere?

In honor of Juneteenth — the holiday that celebrates the emancipation of those enslaved in the United States, which will be observed as a state holiday in New Jersey for the first time this year — NJPAC invites you to join us for the next PSEG True Diversity Film Series screening and panel discussion, which will examine the need for reparations, and discuss the forms that reparations might take, from changes to voting laws to reform of the criminal justice system.

Before we meet, we’ll screen the 2006 documentary Banished: How Whites Drove Blacks Out of Town in America, which focuses on the expulsion of Black families from neighborhoods across the South during the post-Reconstruction era.

This season, the films NJPAC will present through the PSEG True Diversity Film Series will focus on social and racial justice. To continue these presentations safely during the pandemic, this series now follows a book club model: We’ll watch the selected films in our homes, on our own time, then come together online to discuss them with panelists who can offer context.

We encourage you to view Banished on your own schedule; the film is available to watch free on YouTube. Then, join us for a virtual panel discussion at 7PM on Monday, June 21, 2021.  Our panel will be moderated by Liz Ševčenko, founding director of the Humanities Action Lab at Rutgers University-Newark, a consortium of more than 30 universities that collaborate to develop student- and community-curated public memory projects around social issues.

Moderated by:

Liz Ševčenko

founding director of the Humanities Action Lab at Rutgers University-Newark
View Bio

Our Panelists include:

The Reverend Dr. Charles Franklin Boyer

Co-founder of Salvation and Social Justice
View Bio

Ryan P. Haygood

President and CEO of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice
View Bio

Professor Ndjuoh MehChu

Scholar at Seton Hall Law School
View Bio