Well before your current position, you were already involved in campus-based and city-based activism in college. What lead you to start your activism at such a young age?
I grew up admiring some our history’s most transformative freedom fighters including Fred Hampton, Shirley Chisholm, Bayard Rustin, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Dr. King, and my uncle Gordon Parks. These were the people who I wanted to be comparable to as soon as I had the opportunity. The inequitable circumstance that my fellow students and I encountered during college was my opportunity to continue their legacy and to strive to sustain their fight for justice and freedom. Moreover, I grew up observing my mother and aunt as strong advocates in our community–I was sort of immersed in a family culture where it was our obligation to take a stand when something was not right.
What experiences at Teach For America led you to help co-found inspireSTL?
My experience as a Teach For America Corps Member, who taught English in an inner city public school, was the most enlightening couple of years of my life. I saw first hand the complexities of oppression and its impact on our urban youth. Teach For America and my classroom experience taught me that the youth I served had valid hopes and dreams that deserved to be realized; yet there was no path of educational access and opportunity for that to happen. Co-founding inspireSTL was a responsibility to my students and my community. I learned that they had so much potential and two years in the classroom was only the beginning of my lifelong commitment to educational equity. inspireSTL was the best next step to ensuring more underserved yet brilliant youth had long-term access to a transformative education.
For you, what does “success” look like for individual students that go through inspireSTL?
I believe success is defined by the achievement of the collective. When scholars of inspireSTL are successful, that equates to them receiving a transformative education from middle school through college completion and pursuing careers where they are change agents in urban and oppressed communities who work to empower others to live a quality life where they have access to educational, financial, housing, and health opportunities that are equitable.
In addition to the demanding work you do with inspireSTL, you recently became a founding member of the Young Citizens Council of St. Louis in response to the killing of Michael Brown, Jr. Why?
Michael Brown could have easily been one of the scholars that I serve through inspireSTL. All of our youth from the urban core are Michael Brown and they each deserve to have people willing to fight for their life and their chance to attend college and become the future leaders of our region and beyond. I became involved because #blacklivesmatter.
