At Yearly Meeting 2022, Quakers committed to making practical reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism and economic exploitation. This page offers some resources to help meetings think about this work.

For everyone in the Yearly Meeting – individual Quakers, local and area meetings, staff, committees – this is new. Not a new idea, but a new commitment. We will be working together to make this commitment real over the next weeks, months, and probably years. But here are some early steps you could take.

Get involved

    Yearly Meeting's decision

    To better understand the decision please see:

    If this is new, then you may find preparation materials and session information from Yearly Meeting 2022 and 2021 helpful.

    Events and courses

    Woodbrooke, a Quaker learning and research organisation, has a number of relevant sessions and courses over the next few months. These deal with reparations directly, or further the general conversations coming out of Yearly Meeting. All course links are to Woodbrooke's website.

    Claiming Our Collective Power

    A session led by members of Green Street Meeting's reparations committee (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting) and members of Lancaster Meeting who have been involved in responding to Black Lives Matter and researching their meeting's connections to slavery. 22 June at 6pm UK time.

    Find out about 'Claiming Our Collective Power: Making Reparations for Quaker Slave-holding'.

    Taking Positive Action With Our Money

    This is a general look at how we use our money as individuals and a faith community and will include discussion of reparations. Starts 11 June. You can still sign up over the next week as it runs until July.

    Find out about 'Taking Positive Action With Our Money'.

    Swarthmore Lecture events

    There are five follow-up sessions relating to the Swarthmore Lecture. You can book on any session that interests you:

    • History, guilt and change: Thursday 16 June, 7–8.30pm
    • Addressing the imbalance: Tuesday 28 June, 7–8.30pm
    • Seeing the water: Tuesday 5 July, 7–8.30pm
    • Anti-racist action now: Tuesday 19 July, 7–8.30pm

    Discomforting Quaker History

    This is a seminar for researchers to present work looking at the discomforting side of Quaker history. Woodbrooke is encouraging people with a general interest in the topic to come along. 18 October and you may drop in between 2.30–8.30pm.

    Find out about 'Discomforting Quaker History'

    Research resources

    Woodbrooke offers support to independent Quaker researchers. Visit Woodbrooke's reasearch pages (offsite link) for more information. Staff are specifically helping Quaker meetings who want to research their historical links to slavery and colonialism. It doesn't have to be formal research or very academically rigorous. Please email Learning@woodbrooke.org.uk.

    Staff of the Library of the Society of Friends are also happy to support Friends in this area.

    Library staff have written a Research guide - Slavery and the meeting (PDF) for meetings to explore their links to slavery. The guide was inspired by the research by Ann Morgan at Lancaster Meeting.

    More resources and idea will be added to this page in the coming weeks.

    Header image Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons