When we first started this show, one of the questions we often asked is, "what do you think is one of the most pressing issues our city faces." And often, the response that we got was the racial divides. With the death of Alton Sterling and the two police officers back in 2016, the conversations on race were suddenly more prevalent. Leading much of this discussion, was the organization, Dialogue on Race. In this episode as altBR comes to a conclusion, we wanted to circle back to this important topic to leave you all with a bit more perspective, and hopefully, some valuable information that you can use in your own experiences and conversations on race moving forward.

To help us with this, we’re in the studio today with Maxine Crump, who is the President and CEO of Dialogue on Race Louisiana. The model for this program was created more than 20 years ago. Maxine worked with YWCA past board presidents, community organizations like Louisiana Council on Human Relations and professors of History, Political Science and Sociology from both LSU and Southern University to develop a structured program of six consecutive two hour weekly sessions based on scholarly reading materials and led by a bi-racial team of trained facilitators. Maxine has remained involved in a leadership role in Dialogue at all levels, including training facilitators from its inception.