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Inc. Darnell Moore, Board Member of Children of Combahee and Writer Vivian Anderson, Board Member of Children of Combahee and Organizer with Every Black Girl, Inc. and Black Lives Matter NYC Rev. Kym McNair, Board Member of Children of Combahee and Associate Minister, Antioch Baptist Church, Bedford Hills, NY and Minister of Community Education and Engagement, Bedford Presbyterian Church, Bedford, NY Hari Ziyad, Board Member of Children of Combahee and Founder of RaceBaitR CeCe Falls, Board Member of Children of Combahee and Founder of Harlem SUN LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant, Board Member of Children of Combahee and Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College Jason Johnson-Gordon, Board Member of Children of Combahee and Organizer with BLM Philly Sevonna Brown, Board Member of Children of Combahee and Gender Justice and Human Rights Project Manager at Black Women’s Blueprint Rev. Eboni Marshall Turman, Ph.D., Board Member of Children of Combahee and Assistant Professor of Theology & African American Religion, Yale Divinity School The Rev. Dr. Emma Jordan-Simpson, Board Member of Children of Combahee and Executive Pastor of the Concord Baptist Church of Christ, Brooklyn, New York Dr. Tamura Lomax, Board Member of Children of Combahee and Co-Founder, The Feminist Wire Minister Whitney Bond, M.Div., Board Member of Children of Combahee and Ph.D. Student at Inc Jill M. Humphries, Ph.D., Africana Studies, University of Toledo, National Conference of Black Lawyers New York Chapter Rev. Andrew Wilkes, The Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York, Associate Pastor of Young Adults and Social Justice and PhD student at CUNY Graduate Center Rev. Bianca Davis-Lovelace, Pastor of Eastgate Congregational United Church of Christ & Co-Founder of Progressive Millennials for Action Ahmad Abojaradeh, Founder and Executive Director of Life in My Days, Inc Alexis Haynie, Ph.D. Student, Literatures in English, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Kretel Krah, Womanist, Christ follower, Covenant House of Georgia, Homeless youth advocate, Activist for Black women and children Prof. Katherine Kurs, Faculty of Religious Studies, Eugene Lang College, The New School University Naomi Washington-Leapheart, The National LGBTQ Task Force and City of Refuge United Church of Christ

Rev. Kymberly McNair is a preacher, teacher, sister, daughter, Titi and survivor of child sexual abuse. In August 2008, while she was attending a gospel music workshop, Rev. McNair had the opportunity to sit down and offer her uncle, the man who sexually violated her when she was 5 years old, forgiveness. They spoke for several hours and she learned some of the facts of her abuse and she learned about the man who abused her. Since those hot days in August, Rev. McNair has contemplated the ways in which a theology of forgiveness can either shackle or liberate a survivor of child sexual abuse.

TO HOLD FIRST TOWN HALL IN BROOKLYN Brooklyn, NY, October 29, 2016—Children of Combahee will hold its first town hall on child sexual abuse in Black churches, “ The town hall is part of a bi-annual, national series addressing the epidemic of child sexual assault, rape, and incest in black church communities. Children of Combahee is a newly founded project, funded by the Just Beginnings Collaborative, that mobilizes against child sexual abuse in Black churches using womanist pastoral and theological methods. Just Beginnings Collaborative; The Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn; Black Women’s Blueprint; Columbia University’s Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice; Children’s Defense Fund-NY; African American Policy Forum.

She is a Reproductive Justice Advocate for women of color, as well as a full-spectrum doula and birthworker through Ancient Song Doula Services and the Doula Project. Sevonna, a recent graduate of Williams College, dedicates her work to the survival strategies Black women build from rituals, sacred truths, and the ways they honor the intergenerational narratives of their bodies and reproductive herstories. Most recently she received the ELLA Fellowship through the Sadie Nash Leadership Programs where she will conduct a workshop series on reproductive justice for young women of color through grassroots organizing. As a survivor she seeks to bridge the connections between reproductive justice and anti-sexual violence advocacy through her cultural work, human rights lens, and womanist frameworks.