Ascendant:

• Performance by contempo world jazz musician Karen Briggs Kuartet
   

Opening conversation

• Leslie Greene Bowman, President, TJF
• Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation
• William “Bill” Webb, Getting Word Descendant and Member of the Getting Word Advisory Committee
• Melody Barnes, Chair, Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) and Executive Director of the Karsh Institute of Democracy and W.L. Lyons Brown Family Director for Policy and Public Engagement at the Democracy Initiative, University of Virginia (Moderator)
   

• Michael Blakey, National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Anthropology, Africana Studies, and American Studies, College of William & Mary
• Peter Cook, Design Principal at HGA Architects & Engineers
• Brian Palmer, Peabody Award-winning journalist
• Brent Leggs, Executive Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation (Moderator)
  
  Closing poetry from Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely, Poet, Activist, Getting Word Descendant, and Getting Word Advisory Committee Member, accompanied by Angela Niles, Musician and Getting Word Descendant, on drums
   

• Niya Bates, Ph.D. Candidate, History Department and Department of African American Studies at Princeton University
• Andrew Davenport, Getting Word Descendant, TJF Public Historian and Director of the Getting Word African American Oral History Project and Ph.D. Candidate, History Department, Georgetown University
• Justin Reid, Director of Community Initiatives, Virginia Humanities
• Hannah Scruggs, Public Historian
• Gayle Jessup White, Getting Word Descendant, and Public Relations & Community Engagement Officer (Moderator)
   

Performance by contempo world jazz musician Karen Briggs Kuartet
 

• Ava DuVernay, Writer, Director, and Filmmaker
• Sarah Lewis, Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture and African and African American Studies at Harvard University; Founder of The Vision & Justice Project
• Wynton Marsalis, Musician, Composer, Bandleader, Educator, and Advocate of American Culture
• Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely, Poet, Activist, Getting Word Descendant, and Getting Word Advisory Committee member
• Melody Barnes, Chair, TJF, and Executive Director of the Karsh Institute of Democracy and W.L. Lyons Brown Family Director for Policy and Public Engagement at the Democracy Initiative, University of Virginia (Moderator)
   

• Annette Gordon-Reed, Trustee, TJF, and Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University
• Clint Smith, Author and Staff Writer at The Atlantic

• Leslie Greene Bowman, President, TJF
• J. Calvin Jefferson, Getting Word Descendant
• Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation