Personal Acts of Reparation

Giving Witness by Greta Fillingim | Publish Date: November 9, 2025

When I was eight my single mom and I moved from Monterey to Berkeley.  She was a social worker, working full time and needed someone to be home after school for me. She hired a young Black woman named Judy Robison who had just moved to Berkeley from Pine Bluff Arkansas to live with her older sisters, Idene and Bertha.  A year earlier in 1957 the State of Arkansas was engulfed in a Civil Rights Crisis when nine Black students attempted to attend Little Rock Central High School and were met by the state national guard blocking their entrance to the school and angry mobs protesting their attempt to desegregate the school. Judy had experienced racism of all kinds and told me many of her experiences.  She was just 10 years older than I and proved an amazing teacher for me.  Of course I had heard Pete Seeger sing the song The State of Arkansas which was about this because my mom had all his records and we listened often. Nothing, however, could impact me like Judy’s accounts. 

Judy planted many of her experiences in my head and my heart. They have stayed with me.  When we at Epworth were trying to respond to the pain of the country after George Floyd’s murder, our racial reckoning brought Judy’s experiences back into the foreground. Our actual reckoning with our own privilege and racism brought a desire for me to make personal changes which I am actively engaged in. Becoming an anti-racist became so important. This effort has led me many places. 

Our Epworth group learned about the Black Wealth Builder’s Fund as we explored   reparations work around the injustices long perpetrated against the Black Community. Much of the injustice in the Bay Area has been committed around housing. Home ownership as you know is one of the ways that intergenerational wealth is created. We invited one of the creators of this fund to speak to us. I won’t go into the details of how the fund works because you will hear this from others but  Jerry and I became convinced that contributing to this fund was something we could do as a personal form of reparations.   

Along with many at Epworth we contribute monthly to this fund through our monthly giving at Epworth. While this is not the end of my work becoming an anti-racist, it is a step along the way to which I am very committed.