Connecting Women of Color Conference focuses on race relations and empowerment

The eighth annual Connecting Women of Color Conference was held Friday, Feb. 19, in the Jepson Alumni Center. This platform provides undergraduate women of color the opportunity to connect and empower one another through a series of speakers and breakout sessions.

This year’s conference theme was “Building Across Bridges.” Betty Neal Crutcher, keynote speaker and wife of University of Richmond President Ronald Crutcher, emphasized this motif while recounting her childhood experiences growing up in the racially divided South and the meaningful relationships she formed. 

“There will always be more bridges to build,” she said, “more bridges to cross.”

Charm Bullard, associate dean of Westhampton College, said that the conference had been founded out of a need in 2008, after women of color on campus had come to her individually to talk about similar issues during her time as an area coordinator at Richmond. “At the time I had a really good pulse of what was going on because I lived on campus,” she said, “and I had a really strong understanding of how the women of color on campus were feeling.”

After hearing so many women of color say the similar things to her, Bullard saw the need to unite these students in the same room for discussion, she said.

Participants attended two of the six sessions available – one session in Block A and another in Block B. Of the six total sessions, “From Victim to Victor: The Value of Black Women in America, Then and Now,” as well as “#StayWoke: Living in the Margins as Space of Radical Openness” were designated as caucus spaces for women who identify as Black or African American in order to foster more in-depth conversation.

This conference comes at a critical time during which there is a national conversation surrounding race relations, specifically pertaining to the Black Lives Matter Movement, a response to anti-Black racism sparked by the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin. 

“We can have conversations on our campus about these issues that are authentic,” Bullard said. “That’s part of the reason why we have the caucus space. It is an opportunity for women of color to be in the room together and talk about things that might otherwise not be talked about if women who didn’t identify as women of color were in the same space.”

There were 156 people registered for the event, the highest number to date. Both Richmond students and faculty, as well as women from other universities, attended the event.

Contact reporter Jessie Bursma at jessica.bursma@richmond.edu.