Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference

Welcome to the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. (SDPC), a proven premier international justice organization structured for the individual and collective capacity of thought leaders and activists in the church, academy, and community.

Futuring Black Lives

Through Education, Advocacy, and Activism,

We Interrupt Injustice!

Our new direction embraces futuring as both a theological commitment and a strategic framework. In her book, Futuring Black Lives: Independent Black Institutions and the Literary Imagination, Maisha T. Winn defines “futuring” as “a practice of imagining, designing, and preparing for liberated Black futures by drawing on the intellectual, cultural, and institutional traditions created by Black communities themselves.” Furthermore, it is a refusal to be constrained by the crises of the present. It is a declaration that Black futures are sacred, possible, and already unfolding.

And, John Wilson’s Hope and Healing has been instrumental in shaping this agenda by naming HBCUs as “futuring institutions.” They are not relics of past resistance but living laboratories where Black communities have long imagined, designed, and prepared for liberated futures. places where, in Winn’s terms, Black communities have drawn on their own intellectual and institutional traditions to prepare for liberated futures.”