08/24/2026
What happens when an inheritance is interrupted?
That question was at the heart of Inheritance Interrupted: Black Massacres and the Economics of Violence, which the Metropolitan Black Bar Association was proud to co-sponsor on Martha’s Vineyard.
One of the most powerful takeaways from the conversation was that what was interrupted for Black Americans was never only financial. Wealth was lost, stolen and destroyed, but so too were communities, institutions, stories and connections to who we were and where we came from. In many ways, that violence also interrupted our collective sense of pride and possibility.
Telling these stories matters because there is power in knowing what existed before it was destroyed. There is power in remembering what our communities built, created and sustained. And there is power in reclaiming that history as part of our inheritance, too.
Thank you to Kenya Tyson, Nia Clark, Damario Solomon-Simmons, and B. Seth Bryant for a powerful conversation, and to our fellow sponsoring organizations for making space for it.
We remember. We reclaim. And we keep building.
