LEWES — The Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice will kick off a new “Black Voices Matter” campaign at a town hall meeting on Tuesday, May 11,  at 7 p.m., via Zoom. 

The webinar is co-sponsored by the YWCA-DE Racial and Social Justice program.  

Charlotte King, SDARJ founder and chair, will moderate a panel of Black Delawareans to explore why the voices of Black people are ignored, spoken over or simply not present in so many organizations, churches and political structures across the country. 

Rebecca Cotto, director of the YWCA-DE’s Racial and Social Justice program, will present ideas on what white people can do to change that.

Representing various backgrounds and affiliations, the panel includes Rep. Nnamdi Chukwuocha of the Delaware General Assembly; Fay Blake, executive director of Pathways to Success; Rev. Dania Griffin from the Antioch AME Church; and Kaylan Parker, co-founder of the Delaware Black Student Coalition.  

“We want people to hear black voices, listen to black voices, and join together in a mutual effort to understand our commonalities, along with those differences that inform a great unified nation,” Ms.  King said in a prepared statement. “We want all to appreciate that the need to hear Black Voices is more essential to the health and progress of our communities and nation than the centuries of enslaved labor that built this country’s economic and political greatness.”

The launch of SDARJ’s quarterly newsletter “Inside/Out”, edited by Toni Barett, is a first step in the “Black Voices Matter” campaign to encourage black voices in all areas of public discourse. For more information, go online, or register for the town hall meeting.