Education comes in many forms. From community altar building toolkits to political education events, these stories feature Black people teaching skills, lessons, recipes, and ways of being.
Education
Harry Belafonte’s interest in the performing arts began with his experiences at the American Negro Theatre (ANT) in Harlem. The theatre was the home of multiple prominent black actors during the 1940s and Belafonte was able to enact some roles alongside the experienced actors. He and Sidney Poitier honed their understanding of the performance arts despite their financial difficulties by splitting ticket stubs with each other to see plays at the ANT, stating “One of us would go in for the first half, come out at intermission and pass the stub, along with a plot summary, to the other. We saw some theater that way, and agreed that seeing half of each taught us more than not seeing a play at all.”
Soul Fire Farm is an organization founded by a black Jewish family in Albany, NY initially to provide fresh food to their community. Since the farm’s founding, it has grown into a large program that has a nationwide impact, distributing food to thousands of people and working with thousands more through youth programs and community workshops. The group uses afro-indigenous farming practices (like agroforestry and polyculture) to regenerate the ecosystem in addition to planting a variety of crops and raising livestock to create biological diversity. The food the farm produces is distributed to communities living under food apartheid and those disproportionately affected by systematic state violence.
The Baltimore Compost Collective is an organization that collects food scraps and other compostable materials to contribute to the compost pile at the Filbert Street Community Garden to grow to produce and combat urban food insecurity. The organization also functions as a youth entrepreneurship program that trains local teenagers in community-scale composting, food access programming, and other skills applicable to the workforce.
During quarantine, Baltimore-based food designer and social practice artist Krystal C. Mack created "How To Take Care," a digital community zine featuring recipes, poems, journal prompts, and meditations. The project is intended to serve as a "motivational tool for you on the path to mental and physical respite in uncertain times." Released in March of 2020 for $5, all of the proceeds from "How To Take Care" support victims of domestic violence. This project is a beautiful example of how Black women have cared for themselves and their communities during periods of isolation and kept each other well in these unprecedented times.
The Flying Black Medics were begun in 1970 by a group of black medical practitioners who flew from Chicago to Cairo, Illinois to bring healthcare and health education to residents of the remote community. One of the participants, Dr. Leonidas Harris Berry, was also an active member of the civil group, United Front, an organization that provided protection, monetary support, and other assistance to the people in Cairo, Illinois who were the victims of racist attacks.
In 1969 Fannie Lou Hamer founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative, a grassroots organization that planted crops to benefit poor black families. Cash crops like soy and cotton were grown to pay taxes while other crops such as peas, squash, and collard greens were grown to be given back to the families that worked on the coop. Eventually a “pig bank” was started so that poor families could have pig meat in addition to produce. However, without sufficient institutional backing, the coop could not survive over the long term.
Meals as Collective Memory is an oral history project developed in Central Brooklyn to document the socio-culinary history behind Black-owned restaurants as well as the impact of foodways on memory. The chefs and restauranters discuss their memories of family cooking and mealtimes, as well as the conception of their restaurants and recipes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the project shifted to document Black food culture facing pandemic-related challenges but also the opportunities it brought.
The Black Cross Nurses (BCN) were established by Marcus Garvey as one facet of the Universal Negro Improvement Association’s (UNIA) goal to develop a “black nation-state-in-waiting”. The first BCN unit was established in Philadelphia and was aimed to be the principal healthcare provider for the UNIA but also expected to tend to the armed forces, namely UNIA’s own militia and the African Legion. They educated the public on proper sanitation techniques to prevent the spread of disease, attended to the sick in their division, and were expected to enact a system of “relief” in the case of a natural disaster or epidemic. The BCN also provided an opportunity for black women to pursue a career in nursing, a field with otherwise very limited horizons for women of color.
Medical illustrator Hillary Wilson has been part of the push to represent more diversity in medical illustration. The majority of medical illustrations use white males as a model and the majority of medical illustrators are white. The lack of diversity in medical illustration not only hinders black people’s ability to feel comfortable in a healthcare setting but also hinders the ability of patients and doctors to properly diagnose some conditions which would look different on darker skin. Illustrators like Wilson Wilson hope to normalize medical illustrations of POC and disseminate them among the larger population to increase representation in the medical field.
Black Food is a compilation of the experience of the African Diaspora using food as a vehicle. Bryant Terry collects essays, recipes, and artwork from black people around the world. Black Food explores the intersection of food, community, and experience to create a spiritual feast (and a literal one)!