Reparations - and the pace and need for them in Asheville - headline annual conference

Just one month after the protests following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Asheville City Council approved a resolution calling for reparations for the city's black community. 16 months later, most of the details are still being worked out.That pace has frustrated many local activists in the city, but organizers of this weekend's 8th annual African Americans in Western North Carolina and Southern Appalachia conference at UNC Asheville want to put the focus back on the need for reparations and practical solutions. The one-day online event Saturday will focus solely on reparations. Dr. Tiece Ruffin, the director of Africana Studies at UNC Asheville, says all the work that has been done in the past 16 months on reparations can't become 'an exercise in futility.' "The purpose of this conference is how do we move beyond what we have already done with resolutions and appropriations and rhetoric," Dr. Ruffin told BPR in an interview, which you can hear in full above.