The topic of reparations for African Americans can feel overwhelming and is often misunderstood.

Come and explore how reparations are an opportunity for repair and reconciliation at our next Cup of Truth.

We’ll begin the evening with a short film on reparations work, followed by a chat with Chair of the Fulton County Reparations Task Force, Dr. Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, and national activist and researcher, Dreisen Heath. Guests will then be invited to share their thoughts and ask questions during the Q&A session. 

This event is free and open to the public. Join us for conversation and coffee on March 28, 2024 from 7PM – 9PM!

DR. KARCHEIK SIMS-ALVARADO

Dr. Karcheik Sims-Alvarado has studied the history and culture of African Americans throughout the Black Atlantic World for nearly 20 years. Whether in the classroom, museum, or in the field, she has sought to document and teach the African-American odyssey through various mediums. She is currently Chair of the Fulton County Reparations Taskforce, one of only two reparations initiatives at the county level in country. As the CEO of Preserve Black Atlanta, a non profit 501(c)(3) dedicated to identifying, recording, and preserving African-American history and culture, Dr. Sims-Alvarado has developed a model for utilizing historical and cultural assets as a catalyst for economic and community development. She has worked with some of Atlanta’s leading institutions: the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta History Center, Herndon Home Museum, Central Atlanta Progress, and Atlanta BeltLine Inc. Dr. Sims-Alvarado received a B.A. in Mass Media Arts and an M.A. in African and African-American Studies from Clark Atlanta University and a Ph.D. in History from Georgia State University. She is currently pursuing a M.A. degree in Museum Studies from Harvard University. As well, she is a multi-recipient of the prestigious National Endowment for Humanities Summer Institute Fellowship with the Georgia Historical Society and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University. Dr. Sims-Alvarado served as the Founding Director of the John Lewis Fellowship with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. She is a leading authority on Alonzo Herndon, Atlanta’s first black millionaire, as well as the Nineteenth-Century Back-to-Africa Movement in Georgia.She has served as the civil rights historian and exhibition consultant of “A Right to Freedom: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr” with the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm, Sweden and is a creator and co-writer of “Lifting the Veiling,” based upon W.E.B. Du Bois’s first tenured at Atlanta University. Dr. Sims-Alvarado is the author of Atlanta and the Civil Rights Movement, 1944-1968 and the curator of the world’s longest outdoor photography exhibition documenting the long civil rights movement. Currently, she is the Historical Advisor for the immersive exhibition, The March, presented by TIME magazine, and serves as Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

 

DREISEN HEATH

Dreisen Heath (she/her) works as an independent consultant at the intersections of human rights, racial equity, and liberation movements. She is fierce advocate, compassionate collaborator, conscious facilitator, relentless organizer, and nimble strategist, with expertise in racial and reparative justice. As one of the U.S.’s leading reparations organizers, Heath seeks to mobilize and support individuals impacted by systemic racism to enact transformative change through movement and coalition building as well as research, policymaking, and narrative change work. She is actively providing strategic advice, programmatic support, and technical assistance to community-led reparations processes, including those targeting culpable private industries as well as state and local governments. She serves as the co-chair of the Public Education and Narrative Committee on the New Jersey Reparations Council. Heath is also the Founder of the Why We Can’t Wait Coalition, a national coalition of hundreds of organizations, including internationally based and US-based national and grassroots organizations seeking to advance comprehensive reparations at all levels. In May 2023, in partnership with Congresswoman Cori Bush, she helped author and introduce historic reparations legislation which provides a comprehensive framework for a federal reparations program for the legacy of slavery, a framework that never existed in the congressional record prior. Heath most recently led Human Rights Watch (HRW)’s racial justice and reparations work as a researcher and advocate in HRW’s United States Program from 2018 to 2023. Heath has authored significant research reports and publications, including The Case for Reparations in Tulsa, Oklahoma: A Human Rights Argument, which is cited in the historic lawsuit brought under Oklahoma’s public nuisance law on behalf of the three known living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. She’s testified as an expert witness before the United States Congress and has provided testimony and commentary to state and municipal governments to advance wholistic repair. Heath’s writings and thought leadership on the ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, structural racism, and the necessity of comprehensive reparations have been widely quoted and published. Her expertise has been featured and referenced in numerous local, national, and international publications, on radio, and in documentaries and podcasts, including The Washington Post, USA Today, NBC, Reuters, NPR, CNN, PBS, ABC, The Guardian, The Independent, The Nation, Politico, Newsweek, NowThis, Blavity, Fox News, Public Radio Tulsa, The Oklahoma Eagle, among others.

Before joining Human Rights Watch, Heath worked as the Special Assistant to the Director and Counsel of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington DC Office and was a researcher at the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP) at the University of Delaware examining emerging community health and education policy, with a particular focus on access to food in segregated communities. Heath is a graduate of Wesleyan University. Heath also spends her time in her community supporting people without stable housing, organizing against police violence, chasing sunrises and sunsets, enjoying nature, watching and playing sports, and finding joy in the struggle.