The Impact of Slavery and Systemic Racism: The Grace of Repair

Dr. Earl Lewis, founding Director of the University of Michigan Center for Social Solutions and  the Thomas C. Holt Distinguished University Professor of History, Afro American and African Studies, and Public Policy. Recipient of the National Humanities Medal in 2023 awarded by President Biden.

This talk centers on a handful of moments in world history that invite us to think about our own journey and our own means of combining grace and repair.

In 1779, an Anglican cleric and poet named John Newton penned the lyrics to a song that has accompanied many moments of travail and trauma. The song languished in relative obscurity for several years until rescued by American Baptists and Methodists, who fueled a religious revival, called the Second Great Awakening, during the period of years from 1790 to 1820.

Yet its most poignant moment may have come in 2015 when President Barack Obama offered the song as a salve to a grieving nation following the racist murders of Black parishioners attending Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

What many people don't know is the song's birth sprung forth from the horrors of the transatlantic slave system. Before becoming a clergyman, Newton had been a sailor and slaver. A near death experience led him away from the sea and the slave trade. It took him several years to find the grace to repent and to seek repair by becoming an abolitionist.

Learn more at Earl Lewis | U-M LSA Center for Social Solutions (umich.edu).