Dr. Dawn Chitty
Keynote Speaker · African American Civil War Museum
Dr. Dawn Chitty is the Director of Education at the African American Civil War Museum, where she has worked since 2010. Before joining the museum she was a curriculum specialist and social studies teacher serving school districts in South Carolina. Dawn specializes in 18th- and 19th-century education and historical interpretation, and has developed interpretive programs in colonial life, chattel slavery, and archaeology for several historic sites in the Charleston area. She holds degrees in Anthropology and Education and a doctorate in Education, with research focused on museum curriculum and pedagogy about slavery and abolition in the United States.
Cherekana Feliciano
Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society – New Jersey Chapter
Cherekana Feliciano is a family historian, public history enthusiast, and law school graduate. She has been conducting family history research for almost fifteen years and serves as Vice President of AAHGS–New Jersey. Alongside her co-host Janice Gilyard she is one half of the genealogy podcast Speak On It! History and Genealogy Conversations. She also conducts informal research on African American cemeteries in New Jersey. She is a New York City native and a Rutgers University (Douglass College) alumna.
Janice Cross Gilyard
President, AAHGS–New Jersey
Janice Cross Gilyard is a charter member of the Harriet Tubman Chapter of Sons & Daughters of the U.S. Middle Passage, AAHGS–New Jersey, the New Jersey Genealogical Society, and the National Genealogical Society. She has conducted her family research for 26 years and documented her family history back to 1720. She has presented at genealogical and lineage societies, churches, libraries, and universities, including RootsTech, and is a Paul E. Sluby African American Scholarship recipient (2021).
Hermina Glass-Hill
The Susie King Taylor Women's Institute and Ecology Center
Hermina Glass-Hill grew up in inner-city Atlanta; family trips to the Sea Islands awakened her love for the ocean and nature. She served as research historian for the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, and in 2016 founded the Susie King Taylor Women's Institute and Ecology Center to honor this Gullah Geechee freedom seeker and to provide educational programming on the influence of coastal ecology in the lives of enslaved and free women. In 2019 she received the Georgia Governor's Award for Arts and Humanities.
Stephen Hammond
Descendant Families of Arlington House Plantation
A Denver, Colorado native, Steve Hammond is a retired federal employee who spent his entire 40-year career as an earth scientist with the United States Geological Survey and is now a Scientist Emeritus. He is a charter member of the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage. He is a 7th-generation member of the Syphax family of Washington, DC — a line that moved by force to New Orleans and then by choice to Denver. As an Arlington House descendant family member and docent, he has helped initiate an ethnohistory project and is helping lead an effort to pass federal legislation redesignating the Lee Memorial as a National Historic Site.
Guy Weston
Timbuctoo Historical Society
Guy Weston has been engaged in genealogy research for over 25 years, with a substantial focus on his maternal ancestors in Timbuctoo, NJ, where his fourth great-grandfather bought his family's plot in 1829 for $30. His work encompasses research and public history initiatives to raise the profile of Timbuctoo and antebellum free African Americans in New Jersey history. He serves as Managing Director of the Timbuctoo Historical Society, is a Visiting Scholar at Rutgers University, and edits the AAHGS Journal.
Adrienne G. Whaley
Museum of the American Revolution
Adrienne G. Whaley is an educator and history-lover serving as Director of Education and Community Engagement at the Museum of the American Revolution. She earned her Bachelor's in African American Studies from Harvard University and her Master's in Education from the University of Pennsylvania, and has worked in both art and history museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, and the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum.
Skip Richardson & Gigi Best-Richardson
Best Richardson African Diaspora Literature and Culture Museum
Skip Richardson is a retired, disabled Army veteran with twenty-two years of service and co-owner of the Best Richardson African Diaspora Literature and Culture Museum in Tampa, Florida. Gigi Best-Richardson is a historian (Phi Alpha Theta), genealogist, speaker, Virginia Humanities Scholar, and award-winning author of Thomas the Melungeon. She is Vice President of SDUSMP and Historian General of the Society of the First African Families of English America, and has verified her progenitors in colonial America including her 9th great-grandmother, who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619.
Kimberly Latortue
Friends of the Howe House
Kimberly Latortue is a long-time Montclair resident and local realtor. A mother of three, she has served on various PTAs and organizations including the NAACP, Montclair Mutual Aid, and Montclair Early Music, and is current board President of Friends of the Howe House.
Aminah Toler
Friends of the James Howe House
Aminah Toler is one of the founding members of Montclair Mutual Aid, started during the height of the pandemic to serve neighbors in the community. She serves as Vice-Chair for the Township's Landlord Tenant Advisory Committee and as Board Chair for the Friends of the James Howe House — the organization that secured the first "Freed Slave House" in Montclair, one of the oldest structures in the town, dating to the Revolutionary era.
