Bring Steven Baughman Jensen to Your Event
Steven Baughman Jensen spent twenty two years as an award-winning trial attorney demanding justice for people who had been wronged by powerful institutions. He won landmark verdicts. He was part of a team that earned the 2006 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award representing more than 1,600 families whose water had been contaminated by industrial polluters. He knew how to build a case from evidence, how to stay in a difficult room, and how to demand the truth from people who didn't want to give it.
When he retired, he turned all of that toward his own family's history.
What he found in the archives was a slave trader, a Puritan colonizer, and relatives who spent their lives glorifying the Confederacy. What he developed in response was a method — not just for confronting that history, but for healing it.
An evocative keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, and teacher, Steve moves audiences through the full arc of this work: from the discomfort of discovery, through the confrontation with what your family actually did, to the practical and spiritual work of repair. He doesn't lecture. He leads, teaches, invites discussion, and guides attendees into their past, where long overdue conversations become catalysts for healing and repair.
Speaking Topics
Your audience will leave not just informed but moved. Not just moved but equipped. With a method, a first step, and the understanding that this work — however hard — is worth doing.
What My Slave-Trading Ancestor Said When I Asked Him to Explain Himself
Steve walks audiences through his confrontation with Charles Arden Russell — slave trader, Bible-quoting patriarch, and his great-great-great grandfather — in the Texas parlor where Russell once bought and sold human beings.
The Stories White Families Tell — And What They Leave Out
Starting with his grandmother's scrapbooks — full of brave pioneers, honorable Confederates, and Puritan founders — Steve traces the architecture of white family mythology.
From Guilt to Responsibility: A Practical Method for White Americans
Designed for organizations doing racial equity work, this talk addresses the specific paralysis that follows initial racial awareness in white people.
Custom Talks: Get Steve to create a Custom message for your event
Custom talks and workshops can be developed for specific audiences, themes, or institutional contexts. Steve welcomes early conversations — the more lead time, the better the event.
Ideal Guest for:
Faith communities — UCC, Unitarian Universalist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist and progressive congregations of any denomination doing racial reconciliation work. Steve's own church background makes these conversations especially grounded.
Universities — American history, race studies, and creative nonfiction departments. DEI offices and student equity organizations seeking narrative-driven programming that moves people from awareness to action.
Genealogical organizations — RootsTech, the National Genealogical Society, the Association of Professional Genealogists, and regional genealogical societies. Steve is one of very few speakers who bridges genealogy, racial history, and ancestral healing.
Racial justice organizations — SURJ chapters, the Anti-Racist Community Network, the Facilitating Racial Equity Collaborative, and local racial equity coalitions seeking speakers who go beyond awareness into the specific and the actionable.
Corporate and DEI offices — Organizations whose staff have completed standard DEI training and are ready for content that is specific, personal, and built for lasting change.
Museums and cultural institutions — African American history museums, American history museums, and cultural institutions programming around race, land, and national identity.
Ancestral healing and spiritual communities — Family constellation practitioners, ancestral healing circles, and spiritual communities doing lineage work who want a speaker whose method is grounded in both historical record and the deeper work of generational healing.
Legal communities — State and local bar associations, law school civil rights clinics, and CLE programming. Steve's background as a 2006 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award recipient gives him unusual credibility and a distinctive perspective in legal settings.
Why Hire Steve
Most speakers on racial history work from statistics and theory. Steve works from his own family's documented record — and from decades of knowing how to present unwelcome truths to people who didn't ask for them.
He doesn't talk about racism in the abstract. He talks about Charles Arden Russell — his great-great-great grandfather — who “invested his surplus earnings in Negroes … [and] profited by hiring out the slaves to others who needed them.” He names Bet, the enslaved toddler who continued living with Russell after emancipation. He makes the history unbearably specific — because specificity is what opens people up, and opening people up is where healing begins.
He has cross-examined hostile witnesses, argued before state and federal appellate courts, and won cases everyone said couldn't be won. He has also sat with his own grief, his own complicity, and his own ancestors — and found a way through.
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Book Steve
Steve is available for in-person and virtual engagements throughout the year. He is based in Dallas, Texas.
To check availability and begin a conversation about your event, complete the form below or email hello@healingwhitehistory.com directly.
Please include your event date or timeframe, expected audience size, and the format you have in mind.