Here's Why Janet DeVinney Advocates for Racial Justice, Serves on Board

I was about four or five when I first became aware of my race. It was a bright spring Sunday, and we’d stopped at a park after worship to enjoy the mild weather and watch the birds on the pond. I soon noticed a little girl about my age walking with her family. I thought she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. She had skin the color of dark chocolate, black shining hair, and smiling brown eyes. My skin was pale and pink, my hair yellow and curly, my eyes bluish green. I was sad that the Black children I met in the park after worship at my white city church lived far away, and seemed off-limits to befriend. It took me years to learn that families like ours moving farther away from the city to newer suburbs were self-segregating from our neighbors of color. Much to our loss.

Over the years, Mom shared stories to highlight what being white or Black might mean, how being white made our lives easier in some ways, and how being Black made life more challenging for people like the little girl and her family. This made me sad, and angry. It was so unfair! From an early age, I was drawn to racial justice. At the same time, I grew up in a family that enjoyed the white privilege of mobility and choice of housing and schools, moving from the Midwest to New England, from city to suburbs. Born near Chicago to a mom from Detroit and a dad from the middle of Iowa, we moved for Dad's promotions when I was young, first to the City of Worcester, Massachusetts, then to a tiny rural suburb, and then to a larger suburb outside Providence, Rhode Island, where I made some friends with people of different ethnicities, and went on to graduate high school and college.

I’m Janet DeVinney (she/her), a Board Member of The ELCA Association of White Lutherans for Racial Justice serving on the Education and Communications Teams. Prior to being elected at the March 2024 Triennial Gathering, I followed the association, participated in Drop-Ins, education events and webinars, and experienced the George Floyd Global Memorial at the Gathering.

The Memorial is truly a holy place, and a vibrant, caring community, sharing stories of deep loss and great hope, experiencing joy in connection and caring for neighbor, and persevering in working for all to be seen, heard, valued, and known. George’s beautiful aunt, Angela, and neighbor, Georgio, guided our small groups to see, hear, and feel the places where George Perry Floyd and others were killed, the torrent of emotions seeing these sites and name after name displayed on the street and in the Say Their Names cemetery, and feeling the joy of this loving community, where connecting and sharing time and resources are helping build a better neighborhood. The community leaders shared their stories, how they're serving, and their hopes. The memorial full of artwork and thoughtful gifts left by visitors, a thriving greenhouse full of life, an incredible library shed offering a place to read, a community gathering space and clothes closet, the Brass Solidarity Band, and metal fist sculptures offering speakers a platform, are just some of the moving elements and people of this place I carry with me as I listen to, learn from, and build relationships with my Black neighbors and others to help strive for a more just world.

A lifelong Lutheran and a member of The Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Bel Air, Maryland, I serve as co-chair of the Delaware-Maryland Synod Racial Justice Ministry Team and as co-leader of the Good Shepherd Social Justice and Reconciling in Christ Ministry Teams. I’m a writer, editor, and communicator, and have led communications in my congregation, worked in sales and marketing for Ernst & Young and Millennium Chemicals, was managing editor of a daily newspaper, editor of a business paper, a newspaper reporter, radio sales manager and disc jockey, and substitute elementary school teacher.

My spouse, Geoff, and I are blessed to be the parents of two amazing adult children, Caitlin and Will, and to have a wonderful son-in-law, Mike, and dear grandchild, Kalani. I love time together with family and friends, being outdoors exploring God’s creation, gardening, music, the water, reading, and always learning and connecting with others. I’ve long wanted to help make the world a place where the color of our skin and our ethnicities are seen as the beautiful creations of a God who loves us and intends us to be together in beloved community. My family has grown to include a grandchild with Boricua heritage and cousins who are also of African, Niitsitapi, and Vietnamese descent. We are richer for the expanding cultures in our story, and I’m growing through relationships the association has brought. As we face these times fraught with leaders dehumanizing and stripping people of their dignity and rights because of the color of their skin and their identities, it’s more important than ever to me be on this Board, journeying toward racial justice and advocating for my neighbors.

I serve on the Board because I've long wanted to see our Church become more like the diverse world we live in, where God’s beautiful variety of creation is seen, welcomed, and loved, and everyone has a meaningful place and seat at the table. A Church and world where we reckon with our history of colonization, slavery and violence, and make a better future, together. My experiences seeing people who are harmed and devalued because of their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or ability make me work for a world where all are treated with equity and kindness. Even so, I sometimes struggle with white supremacy tendencies toward urgency, formal organization, and perfectionism, sometimes viewing things as time-sensitive and seeing white organization as the norms by which we work and serve. I’m working to change, being open to more relational ways of doing things and taking time to form more authentic relationships and friendships with my neighbors of different backgrounds. Having this board and consultants to help us with accountability on this journey is so helpful and necessary as we work together toward racial justice!

My goal over the last few years was to make a pilgrimage to the Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama. I knew doing so would be deeply meaningful, and would teach me so much more U.S. history. During our winter retreat this year, the Board and our ELCA Racial Justice leaders traveled to the Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum. These experiences were life-changing, yet a beginning. I need to return.

It was a sunny, mild day when we traveled to the Legacy Museum to board a shuttle bus to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. A guide rode with us, sharing horrifying stories about racial trauma that many did not know as he engaged the group with his wit and humor. We thanked him, then stepped off to gather outside the memorial.

The sky quickly darkened, and rain fell like so many heavy tears from the sky as we moved under the shelter of the ticket area, waiting our turn to enter the memorial.

Living in a community where there were racial terror lynchings, where there are hate incidents and people recruiting white supremacists, I still felt unprepared for the magnitude of the memorial. The sculptures showing the depth of the pain and anguish of the newly enslaved. Row after row, column after column of names and states – showing children, parents, spouses, siblings tortured and killed – most of them for made-up “offenses.” Beautiful human beings made in the divine image of God, abused and murdered to keep white supremacy flourishing. It was a visceral experience, a heart-pounding, crying, shaking, reaction of the body and anguish of the mind, walking and reading the columns bearing the names of so many beloved people whose lives were brutally taken to keep the South and Maryland under white control and privilege. I paused and prayed at the Maryland memorials, including Bel Air. We traversed the memorial in silence. We prayed. This too is holy ground. 

Back on the bus, we met two Black educators planning a pilgrimage for their high school youth. We listened, learned, shared, and wished each other well.

The Legacy Museum offered deep, introspective immersion in the history of our country’s chattel slavery, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, Civil Rights Movement, mass incarceration, and beyond. It shared the stories of American regions that brought the legacy of slavery and violence in our country forward in a way few museums have. I learned things about New England that I never knew, and so much more. I need to take more time to truly experience it all, and to visit the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park on the banks of the Alabama River. Our family needs to do this! If you can make the trip to the Legacy Sites, I highly recommend experiencing them.

Some of the many things that most moved me and stay with me:

• Hearing the devastating number of 2 million Africans who died during the Middle Passage, and whose bodies were thrown into the sea — nearly 1 million more than all Americans who have died in every war fought since 1775. So of the nearly 12.5 million Africans kidnapped and trafficked through the Transatlantic Slave Trade, only 10.7 million survived the journey.

• Realizing that a sentence of life in prison without parole is a sentence to die in prison.

• Hearing the cries of African children locked in slave holding cells asking over and over, “Where is my mother?”

• Hearing the stories of young incarcerated children, and adults.

• Reading accounts of violence poured out on people for traveling through a place.

There was so much to experience, see, hear, feel, and remember, that it will never leave me. How can I not help our Church move toward racial equity and justice? I invite you to join The ELCA Association of White Lutherans for Racial Justice on this journey toward racial justice and equity, and God’s beloved community, in our Church.