Rev. Joanne M. Braxton, PhD

Rev. Dr. Joanne Braxton, President of the Braxton Institute for Sustainability, Resiliency and Joy is Frances L. and Edwin L. Cummings Professor Emeritus at William & Mary and Adjunct Professor of Family and Community Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS). Braxton is poet and a scholar whose books include Black Female Sexualities (2015), Monuments of the Black Atlantic: Slavery and Memory (2003), Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook (1993), The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1993), Wild Women in the Whirlwind: The Renaissance in Contemporary Afra-American Writing (1990), Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition (1989) and Sometimes I Think of Maryland (1977), a collection of poetry. She leads the Braxton Institute’s Reparations4LakelandNow! campaign and is working on a new book, Reparations as Soul Repair (Skinner House). Her healing work with physicians and health care workers emerged from the teaching of “Medicine, Arts and Social Justice,” as well as clinical medical education trainings she co-taught for EVMS, and other entities. An ordained minister with standing in the Southern Conference of the United Church of Christ, she has also provided spiritual care in university, congregational and movement settings. During the Covid-19 pandemic Dr. Braxton led Luce Foundation supported “Black Faith Matters” Circles of Care, for impacted health care workers, healers and thought leaders. In 2025, Dr. Braxton will facilitate a new Circle of Care for people doing the work of Reparations, offering trauma-informed spiritual care, collective healing from collective trauma, and spiritual grounding for dangerous times.

Of Reparations4LakelandNow! she writes:
“Lakeland was our Beloved Community, a Healthy Urban Habitat where our core values were served and enriched: Love for family, Care and Trust among Neighbors, Safety and Nurture for all our Children, Respect and Loving Support for our Elders, Self-Empowerment and Community Building through sharing our skills and resources for the common good, Spiritual and Moral foundations—taught and embodied. We had the five pillars of a healthy Urban Community: adequate housing, ample indoor and outdoor gathering spaces, culturally appropriate educational institutions, easy access to public transportation connecting us to the larger metro areas, close connections to nature epitomized by our lake and food-producing gardens and animals. This can and must be restored; all of the parties responsible for the harm and destruction caused by what we now see as ‘planned shrinkage’ and/or ‘dispossession by design’ must be called into account and invited into the process of repair. Above all, future harm to what is left of Lakeland must be prevented. Those responsible for past harm must step up to break the cycle of slow violence that is still in play.”