Valuing Black Lives Global Summit

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.”–James Baldwin

The Valuing Black Lives Global Emotional Emancipation Summit is a solutions-focused, action-oriented forum developed and presented by CHN, in collaboration with the Association of Black Psychologists. This Summit brings together leaders of African ancestry from around the world to develop action plans to free ourselves and our children from the centuries-old anti-Black narrative–once and for all.

The 2015, 2016, and 2017 Summits were held in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Participants have described the Summit as “empowering, liberating, groundbreaking, inspiring, enlightening, and healing.” In 2016, participants voted to support a narrative-changing social media campaign called #ImAfricanBornIn_______WeAreOne. The campaign was designed to bring Black people across the Diaspora closer to each other and closer to Africa.

In 2018, we took our Summit on the road with the Global Truth Campaign and Tour, which we launched from CHN’s birthplace of New Haven, CT, on October 12, 13, and 14. We stopped in Kingston ,Jamaica; Los Angeles and Pasadena, California; Portland, Oregon; Rochester, NY; Omaha, NE.

In August 2019, the Truth Tour arrived in Richmond, VA, to host the 2019 Valuing Black Lives Summit, through which we observed the 400th anniversary of the first recorded forced arrival of Africans in the United States and to. We honored our ancestors by making a spiritual break with the lie of White superiority and Black inferiority so we could enter the year 2020 with a more perfect vision of ourselves as people of African ancestry—a vision focused intently on the truth of our humanity We shared our Appeal to Africans on the Continent and in the Diaspora to make a decisive break away from the lie of White superiority and Black inferiority and to put the matter of emotional emancipation—freedom from the lie—at the top of the global African agenda.

Because of the COVID 19 pandemic, we were forced to end the 2018-2020 Global Truth Campaign and Tour in late 2019, and are continuing all our work online through CHNConnect.