Hello, I'm Dashiani Navanayagam and welcome to The Conversation from the BBC World Service.
This is the show that amplifies women's voices,
taking us around the world to hear the extraordinary experiences and personal insights from women doing incredible things.
The legacy of slavery is an issue that's often discussed in a public and political context,
but to what extent is it talked about in more private spheres,
within family units and also across different families,
especially when those families may have a shared connection to both enslaved and enslaver ancestors?
Today, my guests are two women.
who've been looking into their family history and coming to terms with what they found.
Betty Kilby Baldwin has lived a remarkable life.
She was one of the first African-American students to desegregate her county's high school in Virginia back in the late 1950s.
When she was in her 60s,
Betty was contacted by a white woman who suspected that her own family had once enslaved Betty's ancestors.
They've now forged a relationship and are both actively involved in a movement that attempts to help people heal from the racial wounds of the past.
Anne Diana McCauley is one of Jamaica's most critically acclaimed novelists and an environmental activist.
She was born into a white middle-class family,
but always believed that her ancestors had no connection to slavery.
Then, in 2014, a TV genealogy programme contacted her out of the blue.
and Diana discovered she was related to both enslaved and enslaver people on the island.
Diana and Betty, a very warm welcome to you both to the conversation.