“1. The Roadmap” in “Faith Made Flesh”

1 THE ROADMAP We Make the Path by Walking

Lawrence “Torry” Winn

Between 2017 and 2020, Vajra Watson, Maisha Winn, and I collaborated on an evaluation for the Sierra Health Foundation and its Black Child Legacy Campaign (BCLC). Initially, we were hesitant to take on this study because we each were in the middle of several ongoing educational research projects and had timelines to meet. However, there was something special about BCLC that we could not deny: its name “Black Child Legacy.” We were attracted to the words “Black,” “child,” and “legacy.” As educational researchers, we were all too familiar with titles and names of projects, organizations, and programs that were deficit oriented. But the name “Black Child Legacy” was brilliant. We were also drawn to BCLC because it was community driven and connected seven Black neighborhoods. Although BCLC was the hub, its spokes reached all parts of the community: nonprofits, government entities, law enforcement, families, and schools. Vajra, Maisha, and I all agreed that we needed to use our academic training and university resources to assist with telling the story of the BCLC and its desire to build bright futures for Black children. We decided to use a humanizing (respecting the community and individuals) and transformative (getting to the root problem of a cause to bring about sustainable change) framework that highlighted BCLS’s successful practices and programs and analyzed its efforts that were not working.

During the three-year evaluation process, our research team (including our graduate research student Vanessa Segundo) met bimonthly with the Sierra Health Foundation and its leadership team: Chet Hewitt, CEO; Leslie Cooksy, evaluation director; and Noemi Avalos, evaluation associate. Kindra Montgomery-Block, the fourth editor of this book, was employed by the Sierra Health Foundation and oversaw the BCLC initiative. Her leadership was critical to its sustainability. As we heard stories from participants, learned about the inner workings of the neighborhoods, and observed community leaders, we decided to provide an opportunity for the community leaders, youth, and participants to share their experiences with the BCLC in a book.

In fall 2021, we sent out a call for proposals to community members to write either a research-theory based chapter or a reflection essay about their experiences. We emailed, posted, and shared the call for proposals with community organizations to recruit contributors. Those who answered the call and whose work is included in this volume are as follows:

The historian: Damany Fisher, a Sacramento native and the son of the founders of Shule Jumamose (an independent Black institution established for the educational futures of Black children), is a University of California, Berkeley–trained historian and an expert on redlining and housing discrimination in Sacramento.
The spoken word artist/educator: Patrice Hill is a poet, public speaker, youth advocate, host, curator, community-based educator, and the current director of Sacramento Area Youth Speaks. Patrice has more than two decades of experience teaching in urban, suburban, and exurban communities. She is the featured artist in BCLC’s poetic service announcement: “Every Black Child Deserves to Have a Legacy.”
The youths: Adiyah Ma’at Obolu and Quadir Chouteau are both high school student poets and activists. Adiyah states, “I create my own poetry as a way to honor my story and the future I want to create for the world.” Their high schools and communities have been and continue to be affected by gun violence.
The BCLC community leaders: Ijeoma Ononuju, a PhD graduate of the School of Education of the University of California, Davis; Kenneth Duncan, a social justice advocate and founder of Ball Out Academy; and Heather Gonzalez, director of the Mutual Assistance Network write about their on-the-ground experience of community leadership.
The community artist: David Blanco Gonzalez grew up in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento. He began drawing as a young child and as a teenager was influenced by hip-hop and graffiti art. He was commissioned by the Black Child Legacy Campaign to create his first collection called “Legacy” to pay respect to the victims of third-party homicide in Sacramento and talk about the process of using art as a tool for healing.
The health and wellness advocate: Amaya Noguera-Mujica, an employee of the Sierra Health Foundation, passionately highlights the need to acknowledge racism and oppression and their impact on health and wellness.

The Path Forward

“Part I. Legacy” in chapter 2, provides a summary of the social, historical, and political contexts of the Black Child Legacy Campaign and the events that led to the launch of this citywide effort. It also describes the framework of five pedagogical stances—history matters, race matters, justice matters, language matters, and futures matter—and the research methods used to evaluate BCLC. Chapter 3 shows how history matters by tracing the history of racist policies in real estate and housing that contributed to the current problems in the Black community in Sacramento, which was once referred as a utopia for Black people. It concludes with portraits of seven Sacramento Black communities.

“Part 2. Learning” demonstrates the ways in which race matters in Black education. Chapter 4 highlights the Black educational initiatives and schools aimed at creating pride and instilling Black values in Black children. In chapter 5, the educator and poet Patrice Hill reflects on her time in the classroom as a teacher. A youth poet, Quadir Chouteau, shares his experience of being Black in high school and the impact that gun violence has on learning in chapter 6, and chapter 7 speaks to the significance of being a Black community educator outside the walls of the school. Offering principles for leaders involved in community building, chapter 8 describes how community leaders applied these lessons after a local youth was murdered.

“Part 3. Leadership” provides examples of lessons learned by BCLC leaders doing justice matters work. Chapter 9 grapples with the question of how an outsider comes into a community and builds capital to effectively serve as a BCLC Community Incubator Lead. Chapter 10 establishes the founding of Build. Black., Sacramento’s foremost inclusive community economic development collaboration, which was created after the death of Stephon Clark and subsequent community meetings with the Sacramento government and the Sacramento Kings, the NBA team.

“Part 4. Life” emancipates and unfolds the fullness of the humanity of the individuals involved in the BCLC. Through the portraits of Phil, Chet, Kindra, Crystal, and Jackie, we can show, not just tell, the intimate and intricate nature of movement building. In this section, the author’s pay close attention to the words and stories shared highlighting language matters and is important to cultivating life.

“Part 5. Lessons” provides the opportunity for three community leaders to share their personal experiences with BCLC and the editors to outline the lessons and findings from its evaluation, which can provide best practices for other municipalities considering collective impact and using a community-driven model. It concludes with the coeditors’ focus on futures matter.

Part 1: Legacy