Thread by @JakeRugh

<Thread as promised>
As an infant in 1978, my parents moved with me to Chicago's South Side. For the next 16 yrs, I would be taught, led, & shaped by Black women.

More Black women still guide my life tremendously.

This is dedicated to them and the next generation of Black women

My very first Church leader in the children's nursery was a Black woman named Cathy Stokes, a famed Black LDS pioneer who taught me Jingle Bells, which she still tells me I loved to sing in July. Cathy rose to become the 1st Black woman head of the Illinois Dept of Public Health.

Cathy was from Mississippi, part of the Great Black Migration.

She led our increasingly integrated in Lift Evr'y Voice and Sing, which I also sang at school. I still sing the Black National Anthem.

In preschool, my very first school teacher was also a Black woman.

In 2018, Cathy & I reunited to commemorate the 40 years since the racist restriction on the LDS priesthood & temple was lifted and made our eventually integrated congregation possible, but was of course no guarantee. Multiracial leadership was intentional, led by women like Cathy

Another amazing children's primary Sunday school leader I had was Hattie Soil, still alive, granddaughter of enslaved Black grandparents, and daughter of a sharecropper, who had to pull Hattie across the fields in a sack the day she was born because, slavery never really ended.

Hattie had to chop cotton, too, and ride segregated buses. She met Dr. King while protesting the rotten meat in the Black neighborhoods of Memphis.

Hear Hattie's enthralling life story here:
vimeo.com/61392133

After, she shared sweet potato pie, enough for 50 students!

Hattie's husband, Victor Soil, embodied our nation's deepest and oldest racial truths--he was a direct descendant of Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson... (more to come)

Here is Hattie's husband, Vic, who was a counselor (co-pastor) to my father, bishop (pastor). Growing from 90 to 400 members the congregation went from a branch to ward, 45% white, 45% Black. Vic died tragically of glaucoma over 25 yrs ago; my dad died of cancer in 2016. R.I.P.

Our LDS congregation became the most racially integrated of any faith on Chicago's South Side in the 80s & 90s.

Even by 2000, on a scale of 100, Chicago's black-white segregation score was 90.

I lived in both 98% Black Woodlawn and more integrated Hyde Park.

Cathy, Hattie, along with so many other Black women, were leaders, not just members. My dad & Cathy made sure Black people were a president or presidency member of every organization.

White children like me saw Black leaders in positions of authority.
churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1…

My 5th grade teacher was a Black woman who taught me about continentality and dirigibles, the former being what epitomizes the climate of Illinois & Utah, but not the coasts, and the latter being an obscure 19th century type of blimp.

My elementary school was about 55% Black.

Much more to come tomorrow...

I now want to talk about three of my Black women mentors, --ordinary Civil Rights activists, who showed me how they are superheroes, but not superhuman:

-Myrna Jackson, Alabama
-Rosie, Texas
-Hattie Soil

They suffered trauma and continue to suffer for their heroism and bravery

Myrna Jackson protested as part of the children's crusade in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. She didn't think of it as extraordinary--just the way Black people had to defend their dignity & equal rights.

Myrna remains terrified of dogs, not just huge dogs from Kelly Ingram park

I spent many hours with Myrna, learning from her, and understanding in 2017 now how this all applies to our present righteous civil rights uprising sweeping the nation in 2020. We are all called upon to step up, but many people, like back then, take greater risks to their lives

Ms. Rosie (last name withheld) was raised in Arkansas and experienced the reality that most schools did not, in fact, desegregate shortly after the 1954 Brown v. Board decision: Her HS did abt 10 yrs later. She led the move to integrate the refreshment stand.

While she said it wasn't much, she went on to enlist in the military as did her husband. Later, he was stationed in Germany and she had triplets--triplets!--but no one was there to help her. She served our country and raised 3 wonderful children but got no outside support.

Like many Black American members of the middle class, the military and civil service was a pathway to upward mobility but she still had no fortune, no massive wealth, despite her massive contribution. She is not hurt, but grateful. I worry we are not grateful enough *to her*.

Finally, Hattie Soil, my childhood teacher, protested the selling of rotten meat in the stores in the Black community in Memphis and suffered humiliation of sitting in the back of the bus. Like Myrna, she protested without family because her single mom could not take the risk

Hattie told me as she did my students in 2012 that, to this day, she does not sit in the back of the bus.

That she is still afraid of dogs, esp. police dogs, that were set on her.

I don't think we properly understand how these women are heroic, my role models, but still human.

Let me talk about a Black woman shaped me at Kenwood high school @BroncoSociety: my Spanish teacher, Alice Phillips. In 1989, I started HS Spanish 2 years early as a magnet school entry, though it was my local HS I walked to for 4 yrs. Ms. Phillips was also a 1st teacher for me.

A little context: Kenwood was 9% white around 1990 & today, in 2020, it is 4.5% white. It has always been a school with a very high graduation and college-going rate, in part due to the strong Black middle class contingent. See notable alumni here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenwood_A…

Remember, though, even though Kenwood, like Whitney Young, alma mater of @MichelleObama & my TA @Rachelw791 (more on her later!), has always been high-achieiving, we didn't have a track. Or new books. Or toilet paper. Only one door was unlocked. Metal detectors. Had to wear an ID

--> The Black urban (or suburban) middle class does not accrue the same advantages or live the same life as the White suburban middle class. Regardless of the fact that Kenwood is stellar & Black students go on to Howard, Harvard, Dartmouth, Morgan State, they were over-policed:

I know I didn't grasp it then, but I saw glimpses & heard my Black friends tell me--I believed them. We know from research by another Black women role model of mine, Dr. @CarlaShedd, that segregation makes the school *experience* unequal for Black children
russellsage.org/publications/u…

One last thing about Kenwood. My teammate on the 4x4 track relay team had to put down his relative's address to attend a quality public HS like Kenwood.

Today he has a master's degree & a house WAY bigger than mine, a big taxpayer.

This shows you our racist system is broken

Everyone else but me on the cross-country team was Black or Puerto Rican, what I felt was normal and am still more comfortable with vs. all-white settings...

Das Efx & Cypress Hill were some favorite hip hop artists to listen to. Cypress Hill was also Black & Latino.

Back to Ms. Phillips:

Remember, I was used to being one of the few, sometimes the only, white boy in class. I thought it was normal and I was used to Black being the norm in a Black-White world. Ms. Phillips helped me see the Latino community in a new way...

Ms. Phillips shaped my world: She told us of the many times she went to the courts and helped translate for Mexican immigrants when no white gatekeepers suspect a Black American woman (she was not Afro-Latinx) would be able to do so. She showed how Black people ally for justice.

I'm not FB anymore (and will never look back), but I need to re-connect with Ms. Phillips to thank her again for her wisdom, her Spanish skills (I took 6 yrs. of Spanish from 7-12 grade and served an extra month on my mission in Guatemala thanks to her tutelage), and her example.

If my earlier examples of Cathy, Hattie, Myrna, Rosie and others didn't show you, I hope the example of Ms. Phillips shows you why white children like me need to see, hear, learn from, respect, and be transformed by Black women in positions of authority.

More to come!!!