An extraordinary event at 2:30 p.m. Sunday in Old Church in Oxford will bring the community together to honor the legacy of an enslaved woman, Kitty Boyd.

An unusual art installation by Lynn Linnemeir will be presented, descendents of Boyd and of the Methodist bishop who owned her and members of the community will be there for the event, the finale of Emory University’s Slavery and the University conference. They will reflect on our "great and complicated history," according to anthropologist Mark Auslander, who has written a book on Boyd.

Complicated indeed, even 150 years after the Civil War. Wounds remain unhealed, wrongs unacknowledged. Events such as this and the Emory conference are to be applauded. They provide an open and honest dialogue about a painful past and enable us to strive together for a better future.