Reconciliation in Action

TCU Comes Together for 2022 Race & Reconciliation Week

By Texas Christian University

March 24^th, 2022

Even a late-season ice storm and campus closure didn’t stop TCU's Race & Reconciliation Initiative (RRI) from presenting its 2022 Race & Reconciliation Week, a series of events designed to bring the campus community together to explore and engage the topic of TCU's relationship to race and cultural identity.

Though the weather delay split the weeklong programming between late February and mid-March, TCU’s second annual Race & Reconciliation Week was well worth the wait.

Caffeine & Conversation

Before the storm, students and faculty gathered on the morning of Feb. 22 for Rise & Grind with Black Coffee. Finding common ground with others over the shared language of coffee was RRI’s central purpose for this daybreak gathering.

Connecting at the Core

Horned Frogs continued to Rise & Grind with the RRI at a Feb. 22 afternoon yoga session, which focused on connecting with one’s self to find balance in doing race and reconciliation work.

Learning on Foot

March 18 proved to be the perfect spring day for the rescheduled Walk with Us: TCU Heritage Trail, an educational stroll to appreciate the Indigenous, military, Latinx and African American markers and milestones on campus.

Remembrance & Reconciliation

RRI’s one-night only Facebook Live event on March 16 featured keynote speaker Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., the last living witness to his cousin Emmett Till’s abduction, which galvanized the civil rights movement in 1955. Parker has played a central role in pushing for reconciliation of his cousin’s death for more than 60 years.

“The wheels of justice grind, but the grind is very, very slow,” said Parker. “Reconciliation is important. I'm very thankful to [TCU] for standing up.”

About RRI at TCU

The Race & Reconciliation Initiative is an academically-based, historically-focused initiative designed to investigate and document TCU’s relationship with slavery, racism and the Confederacy. The endeavor will span multiple years. The focus for 2021-22 is an intersectional approach to TCU’s founding years, examining the experiences of Native American, Indigenous and Latinx peoples, as well as Black Americans.