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Southern Virginia to honor enslaved Africans with service of lament and repair, reinterment of remains

October 27, 2026

[Episcopal News Service] As part of its yearslong effort in reckoning with its history of racism and role in upholding slavery, the Diocese of Southern Virginia has hosted a series of events throughout 2026 centered around reconciliation and repentance. The next event will take place at 10 a.m. Eastern on Nov. 2, All Souls Day, called “Lament. Repent. Reconcile. Heal.” The day will start with a morning worship service at Bruton Parish Church in Colonial Williamsburg honoring three enslaved Africans whose corporeal remains are permanently returning to Virginia after spending decades stored by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Following the livestreamed service, they will be interred nearby at the Utopia Quarter, a site for enslaved laborers located within the Kingsmill resort area, which was previously a plantation. Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe will preside, former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry will preach, and Southern Virginia Bishop Susan Haynes is leading and directing the service. The Rev. Jan Brown, a deacon of 10 years who served Bruton Parish for nearly nine years and has co-led the research of the ancestral remains and planning their repatriation, describes centering the service around the descendants as acts of being “mindful and respectful,” and giving their ancestors the “dignity and reverence they deserve,” she said. “There are people who say things like, ‘This was 400 years ago. Why don’t you let it go?’ First and foremost, these are humans, and they weren’t treated as humans by the church when they were alive. We have never named that sin properly and lamented our responsibility for having done so,” Brown, who is scheduled to be ordained a priest on Oct. 30, told Episcopal News Service. “The truth has not been told before, and it’s being told now, and we’re reckoning with it.  “We always say we want to repent, but you can’t repent if you haven’t lamented first. So, this is our season of lament.” Brown is the founder and executive director of SpiritWorks Foundation Center for the Soul. With diocesan support, the nonprofit created The Long Way Home: A Season of Reckoning, a 49-day season of formation, lament and repair that launched Sept. 14, Holy Cross Day, and culminates with the All Souls Day service. The diocesan observance “takes its name from the long, often invisible road that leads a community back to the truth of its own history and from the ancestors themselves, whose long way home is only now, after centuries, ending.” Clergy and lay Episcopalians throughout the diocese observed the season. Many of the descendants still live in the Williamsburg area, though others live elsewhere. Loretta Burwell, for example, lives in Atlanta, Georgia. A descendant of the Burwell family, she is a lay Episcopal elder who has been involved with archival research and repatriation efforts. “[Burwell’s] been very faithful, and she has told us that she considers this work her gift to her ancestors,” Brown said. The service’s liturgy will acknowledge the injustices many generations of Africans suffered while enslaved in Williamsburg from its founding in 1632 until slavery formally ended in 1865, when the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It will also acknowledge slavery’s enduring legacy in the form of systemic injustices. The service will include readings from Scripture, music, prayer and reflection. Southern Virginia’s racial reconciliation journey is more than a decade in the making. In 2010, the Newport News-based diocese passed a resolution that created the Repairers of the Breach Task Force. The task force was named in reference to the promise of restoration and renewal depicted in Isaiah 58:12: “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” The task force regularly hosts racial healing workshops and other educational events that foster empathy and encourage Episcopalians to engage in racial and ethnic justice work in and out of church. Its website offers educational and liturgical resources for congregations and church leaders. In 2013, former Southern Virginia Bishop Herman Hollerith IV formally apologized for the diocese’s role in slavery and segregation in a service of repentance, reconciliation and healing. Haynes described the years-long work as “a really big deal,” especially when recognizing the harming of different groups of people “is not a very popular thing to do” outside of church. “It’s not just one diocese attempting to repair the relationship, but it’s the whole people, and it’s the whole church that is trying to stand against harming other groups of people,” Haynes told ENS in a phone interview. “This day of reckoning, at least for myself, is an act of love for my country, because I want my country to be whole and well and healthy. But in order to be whole and well and healthy, we’ve got to acknowledge past wrongdoings first.” The diocesan service comes as Colonial Williamsburg prepares to celebrate its centennial Nov. 14 and 16 as a living-history museum. Much of the museum’s own racial reconciliation work has included uncovering, restoring and centering the stories of the enslaved and free Black people who made up approximately half of Williamsburg’s population in the 18th century. The diocese’s reconciliation journey also included several years of archival research and working closely with the Let Freedom Ring Foundation, a Williamsburg-based nonprofit dedicated to preserving and protecting the site and artifacts of the First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, one of the oldest active congregations, founded in 1776, the birth year of the United States, by enslaved and free Black Americans. The researchers learned that additional 38 unknown enslaved Africans whose skeletal remains, at some point, were excavated from the nearby Pettus Plantation burial site and remain with the Smithsonian Institution. The names of their enslavers are known, though, because their names appear on the pews at Bruton Parish Church. The collaborators are working on repatriating their remains so they can be “properly” buried in Virginia, Brown said. […]