Not a Moment, A Movement.

Growing up, the only people of color East alum Olive Henry knew were in her family.

All of her friends at Belinder Elementary School were white. The girls she ate lunch with at Indian Hills Middle School were white. Since it was all she had ever known, Henry didn’t grasp the concept of sticking out as a person of color in SMSD until high school.

But senior Alyssa Jimenez felt out of place her first day in the district. After living in Wyandotte County and attending diverse private schools, Jimenez struggled to find her identity among the 85% white student body once she transferred to East her freshman year.

“I didn’t really know how to identify where I came from because I lived in kind of a bad neighborhood, like past 18th St,” Jimenez said. “I just couldn’t come to terms with being a Latina and finding people at [East] who I could connect with. I had friends, but I never talked to them about what had happened to me at school.”

During her freshman year, Jimenez was assigned an English project to identify and present on a problem within the school. As a woman of color, she was compelled to choose diversity. Her presentation was met with responses like, “Why is this so important” and “This isn’t even an issue,” reinforcing the feeling that her struggles about her identity didn’t matter to her peers. 

Jimenez, along with some teachers and other students of color, feel that increasing conversations about racial issues and biases, diversifying the staff and adjusting curriculum to represent contributions of people of color would help students of color feel more represented and welcome at East.

After hearing students express concerns similar to these during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement over the summer, Assistant Principal Dr. Susan Leonard and English teacher Samantha Feinberg organized a meeting with students of color. According to Leonard, one of the most prominent issues the students mentioned was the use of the n-word and other discriminatory slurs among East students.

For Jimenez, hearing these words and phrases thrown around casually in the hallway makes her feel helplessly unwelcome.

“I feel really degraded,” Jimenez said. “I feel like my culture is not important. I feel like, ‘Oh, I don’t belong here, I should transfer to another school.’ ‘Oh my friends aren’t going to get what I’m going through.’ How am I supposed to tell my friends that someone has said this to me? Who am I supposed to tell?”

However, Jimenez feels that having teachers or administrators instigate conversations about the significance and history behind these slurs will help diminish the problem.

“Maybe they didn’t know it was a slur, but it’s just a conversation that needs to be had,” Jimenez said. “I know it’s really uncomfortable for a lot of people, and it shouldn’t be uncomfortable. I’ve had conversations with my friends about uncomfortable situations and how they can’t say [certain things].”

One way Feinberg and Leonard would like to stimulate these conversations is by enacting restorative justice policies, which involves the offender having conversations with members of the victimized community and reading and writing essays to enhance one’s understanding of the topic. This focuses the disciplinary process on rehabilitation through reconciliation with victims and the community.

Although this isn’t currently a widely used practice at East, Feinberg was involved in leading a restorative justice experience with a student who made anti-semetic remarks a few years ago. As a member of the Jewish community, Feinberg met with the student and their mother to discuss the event, and then the student wrote reflection pieces about the conversation and eventually met with the principal.

“A couple years later, the student happened to wind up in my class, and I felt like we had a really good relationship,” Feinberg said. “I really think that if it had been a really disciplinary thing, like, ‘You’re gonna sit in my room and wipe tables after school, and you owe me a 30-minute detention’ or whatever, it wouldn’t have been as effective. Part of the reason that we had a positive relationship that was free of shame was because it truly was restorative.”

Feinberg believes the same concept could be applied to students who make racist comments to help them understand the significance of their words.

Henry also believes that punitive action can further the divide between people, so turning punishment into a learning opportunity is a chance to create another ally. 

However, Henry recognizes that many students who continually make discriminatory remarks are repeat offenders who have had learning opportunities, but still don’t change their behavior. In these cases, Henry believes a statement needs to be released by the district condemning the student when disciplinary actions cannot be taken if the event didn’t occur during school hours.

“It would be really reassuring to the other members of the community, specifically people of color, that at least the administration knows that that’s wrong,” Henry said. “I think it feels like a lot of the time, either [the administration] doesn’t even see it or they don’t care because of the lack of action. When in reality, I know that that’s not true.”

Like Jimenez, Henry feels the changes that can be made to make students of color feel more welcome include diversifying the staff and adjusting academic curriculum. 

Both Henry and Jimenez turned to one of the only teachers of color at the time — David Muhammad — for a sense of belonging and adult advice while struggling to find a community they identify with at East.

However, after Muhammad left East, Henry felt like she no longer had a network of people she could relate to, especially given that Muhammad had been the teacher sponsor of the Black Student Union.

“Once he left, that was one less teacher of color out of like three teachers of color,” Henry said “That entire system, that safe space, should not be dependent on one teacher. I think that’s the problem — a lot of students now feel like that safe space is gone. When the fact of the matter is it shouldn’t have been that dire in the first place.”

Curriculum can also add representation of people of color by broadening the diversity of authors and discussing different cultures.

Feinberg and other teachers within the English department have worked to include more works by authors of differing groups, including racial, gender and sexual identities. Feinberg has instituted a project in AP English to read a book from a list of all female authors, most of whom are women of color.

“Representation matters,” Feinberg said. “If we don’t represent the contributions of everyone, it perpetuates the myth that only white people have contributed to our society. And we know that’s not true.”

In her later years of high school, Henry noticed changes to the English curriculum, with the addition of books like “The Hate You Give,” a novel about a Black girl who witnessed the shooting of her best friend at the hands of a police officer. Henry thinks these changes are moving curriculum in the right direction.

“The norm for so long was basically to read things that characterize race poorly,” Henry said. “You had to be like, ‘Take this with a grain of salt. It’s obviously racist but we’re still going to read it for other reasons.’ That’s really frustrating, especially because of the lack of representation in the student body.”

Feinberg believes that making these changes would lead to an environment that gives every student an equal opportunity to succeed.

“If we want to say that anyone can be anything and do anything they want, then all American children deserve an equally excellent public education,” Feinberg said. “This is an attempt to put all students on equal footing, granting them equal access to future opportunities.”

With the Black Lives Matter movement gathering nationwide attention throughout the year, inequality in all areas has been widely publicized — including in the local business world. 

For Kansas City community members like seniors Cameron Hughes and Ana-Sofia Lahovary, the informative social media reposts that filled their Instagram stories in the summer helped them make a switch — many are planning to shop local items from Black entrepreneurs instead of their typical Amazon or Target products.

Almost half a year has passed since the original social media surge that pushed the importance of supporting local Black-owned businesses so they can remain afloat in an economically-challenging year. But according to Hughes, Lahovary and local business owners, the same t-shirt dress or sugar scrub many usually purchase from Target could also be found at a Black-owned business, which leaves a bigger impact than contributing to the billion dollar corporations. 

“If I need something, I will try to source it locally instead of going to Amazon or Target because those companies will be sustained in the pandemic, they have the funding, they will always be around,” local dress shop owner LaToya Rozof said. “Small Black-owned businesses on the other hand, they can’t say the same . . . [by supporting them] you’re giving back to your community, but also you’re helping to make the world better and increase diversity.”

A report published in 2017 by the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO) stated that Black business owners experience the same typical challenges that all entrepreneurs do in starting and growing businesses, whether that be issues with funding or advertising. But systematic challenges like lower starting wealth, limited access to capital and difficulty gaining customer trust stand in the way of Black entrepreneurial success.

As a young Black girl, Rozof was told by her parents and grandparents consistently that she had to work harder than her white friends to be even half as successful. Whether it was teaching herself marketing techniques through Google searches or spending all her own savings on inventory, she always felt a step behind her white peers. 

For decades, Black-owned businesses in America have lagged behind other firms in the United States, according to the AEO report. They name the main boundaries to be the credit gap, the wealth gap and the trust gap, which all impede their ability to be successful by providing roadblocks.

Just 6% of Black business owners said their primary source of credit came from banks, according to the AEO, compared to the 23% for the total sample. That’s a 17% gap. 

For Rosierra Taborn, the owner of a local herbal health company called “Nature Made Me,” funding to start and maintain her business comes from tips at her waitressing job she also has to work at. She and other Black business owners don’t have the privilege to firmly rely on receiving loans from banks or from wealthy family members. Very rarely has she heard of any Black-owned business that was able to get a loan from the bank to start their business, but she — as well as Rozof — hears about white business owners getting loans often. 

Taborn also feels it’s tougher for her to be successful because of the trust gap for black-owned businesses. Specifically as an herbalist — someone who makes natural medicines — she’s had to emphasize her credibility in order to be successful with people who don’t look like her. 

“The number one word that comes to my mind is it’s just unfair,” Taborn said. 

Many are forced to fund their own business due to the credit gap, but Black entrepreneurs struggle to come up with the original funding —  their household incomes are only 79% of those of their white peers, according to the AEO. 

“You get the flack like, ‘Why [do Black-owned businesses] have to be [supported] differently?’ and, ‘Why should somebody care?’ and it’s like, ‘Well we are different because we don’t get the same funding or the same opportunities,’” Rozof said. 

For local small business owners like Taborn and Rozof, money is a catalyst to growth. Especially in the midst of a pandemic, they feel it’s more important than ever to make an effort to scope out businesses who are struggling to get by. 

An NPR podcast about Black Americans and their struggle through the COVID pandemic stated that minority-owned businesses have been far less likely to receive government aid from the CARES Act passed by Congress in March to help provide economic relief. 38% of white small business owners who applied for government aid reported getting it, compared to just 12% of Black and Latino-owned businesses who received it. Rozof was denied support during the pandemic, and hasn’t seen many of her Black peers get approved either.

“Now that we’re getting the light that we want, it’s time for us to step up and show that our products and our brands are quality as well,” Taborn said. “Supporting your local businesses during a pandemic can really make or break a business, especially your small Black-owned businesses. We are relying heavily on that support.”

Although they understand the convenience of ordering from large corporations, Hughes and Lahovary emphasize the importance of teenagers supporting Black-owned businesses after being educated about the institutional racial struggles like the wealth gap, and more recently the CARES Act. 

“I remember reading a long time ago that high schoolers are one of the biggest money-movers because we get money from our parents, we get money from jobs and we don’t have to pay for bills or usually insurance or anything like that,” Hughes said. “I think to advertise [supporting Black-owned businesses] to people our age is a really good thing because we’re more likely to spend money in that way.” 

Anyone can spread the importance of supporting Black-owned businesses through their social media accounts or word-of-mouth recommendations, according to Rozof — several lists of Black businesses are available on social media or on websites like Made in KC Explore or VisitKC. Rozof hopes the empowerment that came from this summer can maintain momentum into the future, and that social media support can aid in that momentum. 

“I think [the social media support] was empowering [as a] successful Black business owner [to] not have to hide that,” Rozof said. “I feel like you needed to hide it because you didn’t want to offend anybody. Now you can say, ‘Yes, I am a Black business owner.’ I’m empowered to say that even more because I know there’s a community out there that will embrace me.”

Lahovary feels the momentum from the BLM movement should carry on through with supporting Black-owned businesses — and her family has been making an effort to try out new Black-owned restaurants or buy their holiday gifts from local shops.

“I think supporting Black-owned business is a way to start closing the racial wealth gap,” Lahovary said. “It’s a way to uplift these underserved communities, it’s a way to continue our momentum and advocacy and activism post 2020.”

Go back to Africa. You’re an Oreo. You talk white. You’re not really Black.

Insults were continuously hurled at 2015 East graduate Kaycee Mayfield by her fellow classmates. She would straighten her hair and wear Sperrys and Vera Bradley, but she always felt like she stood out.

“It was a constant state of worry,” Mayfield said. “I always wondered what people thought about me. It was a worry of ‘Do they like me?’ and ‘Do they not like me because I’m Black?’”

For two years, Mayfield tried to ignore her peers’ microaggressions and invalidations of her identity as a person of color. She considered transferring out of East her junior year to a more diverse school like West or Northwest where she could feel like less of an outcast.

“When you’re a kid, it’s cool to be mean to people and point out people’s differences, especially if they’re the minority,” Mayfield said. “I think it has to do with being sheltered, I think it has to do with immaturity and I think it has to do with what they’re being taught at home.”

When Mayfield attended East in 2015, 87% of the student population identified as white and just over 1% identified as Black, according to the Kansas State Department of Education. By 2019, those numbers had shifted only slightly to 84% white and 2% Black.

The lack of racial diversity at East has deep roots and can shape some students’ perspectives, but East has been taking steps to promote multicultural acceptance.

A long history of redlining and discriminatory public school district boundaries have made it next to impossible for many minority students to receive a high quality education surrounded by students that look like them, based on senior Morghan Golloher’s experience.

As an in-district transfer student, Golloher transferred to the East area schools in kindergarten and has stayed ever since. But, according to Golloher, Black students at East have to put on a facade in order to be accepted and hold themselves to a higher standard in order to avoid a bad reputation.

Perspectives on race can change or be skewed, according to 2020 East graduate and University of Kansas freshman Mkai Jantz. Jantz grew up as a minority in Prairie Village. It wasn’t until he visited Atlanta in October that, for the first time in his life, he saw a place where white people are the minority. 

“When I graduated high school and I started to travel and experience other places, I realized how shifted our mindset is in Johnson County as a whole,” Jantz said. 

Jantz believes that a lot of people who grow up in one town and stay for their whole life don’t realize that there are different types of races and perspectives everywhere. According to Jantz, while East made attempts to educate the student body on different cultures during his time there, they lacked sincerity.

“You can have a whole Black History Month and you can talk about Kwanzaa,” Jantz said. “But at the end of the day, if the students don’t feel like you actually care about the things that you’re showing them, then they’re just not going to care.”

There are more effective ways to create a welcoming environment, such as what 2019 East graduate and Vanderbilt University sophomore Lauren Winston experienced at Vanderbilt. When Winston arrived, she noticed students celebrating their identities through multicultural dance teams and racial-based choir groups — despite Vanderbilt being a predominantly white institution. 

“It’s very eye-opening to see how the various forms of diversity manifest themselves to create expression, which isn’t something that I saw at East just because there weren’t as many people to even create that appreciation,” Lauren said.

Even though lacking diversity, East has been taking steps to broaden perspectives. In 2015, Lauren’s mom Bernie Winston responded to a number of racial-based harassment cases at East by founding the Diversity and Inclusion Committee. 

The committee meets once a month to bring students, parents, community members, administrators and teachers together to promote cross-cultural understanding throughout the East community. In working towards their goal, the committee has created a District Diversity Advisory Council, held staff and student panel discussions and increased ACT enrollment and scores.

Although her daughter graduated from East two years ago, Bernie remains a member of the committee to ensure that none of her work will be undone.

“I just said I’ll try to improve the current environment the best way I know how, and that’s why I started the Diversity and Inclusion Committee,” Bernie said. “I want to see all the students thrive, not just my daughter.”

Four years ago, the committee drew up 12 recommendations and presented them to the district administrator. Three of them have been put in place by the administrators — hiring a diversity coordinator, providing equity training for teachers and establishing an internal general counsel.

Bernie is encouraged by the progress that is being made, such as the recent district non-discrimination policy put in place stating that all students, parents and community members should report discrimination, harassment or retaliation to the district.

She is currently working with Director of Family and Student Services Dr. John McKinney and Coordinator of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Dr. Tyrone Bates to ensure students of all different cultures and backgrounds feel welcome within the SMSD — and East in particular. 

“East is making some considerable strides to increase awareness and build a culture where all students feel safe,” Bernie said. “We are on the right track and proud of the progress that has been made in the district.”

Sa’Mya and Amari are tired of facing the same microaggressions every day. 

Sa’Mya doesn’t want people pulling at her curls, making her feel like an animal rather than a person. Amari doesn’t want to be followed by employees while she shops as if she’s intruding on their space. But that anger is exactly what fueled their starting A Higher Promise.

Sumner Academy junior Sa’Mya Lewis and her sister Kansas City Community College freshman Amari Lewis started their business — A Higher Promise — in June, selling signs with a black heart design to spark conversations of racial inequality and create a sense of comfort for everyone in the community.

“I feel an angry-ness and frustration towards the world,” Sa’Mya said. “I used that as energy and turned it into a positive thing.”

Their signs feature a simple black heart over a white sign, meant to be a symbol of unity while giving a voice to Black lives, according to Sa’Mya. The sisters agreed that they wanted the signs’ meaning to be open to interpretation, allowing each person who buys one to find their own meaning in the black heart design.

The sisters wanted to first focus on bringing their business to predominantly white communities like Johnson County because it was in those areas they didn’t see the same inclusion of Black people as in their own community, Wyandotte County.

“I think that it being specifically a heart, it softens people to the [Black Lives Matter] message,” Amari said. “And that way, they can receive it more than they would if it was just words, and they were like, ‘I don’t like that because it’s a political statement.’ A heart can’t be a political statement.”

Having been a part of Stage Right and subsequently becoming friends with East students and others who live in Johnson County, they noticed the lack of conversations over racial inequality and wanted to make minorities living in Johnson County feel safer and seen.

“The area that we live in is super diverse and very inclusive,” Amari said. “But when we go out and do theater in Johnson County, it’s really not. It was a culture shock almost to be out there and experience those new experiences. So being able to put [signs] out there and see our friends take our signs and put them in their yards and create a safe space for us was really the whole point of A Higher Promise.”

But their intentions for A Higher Promise aren’t solely based on spreading awareness and starting conversations about race — it’s also a way to remember and honor their brother.

Amari and Sa’Myas’ older brother L.J. Lewis died of gun violence in Kansas City in August of 2019. It was his character that inspired their business and leadership — and even the name, A Higher Promise.

L.J. always kept his promises to his family. When he promised to help them practice for their orchestra trips, he always followed through. When he’d promise to come watch one of Amari’s Stage Right Performing Arts performances, even if she didn’t see him in the audience, she’d know he was there from the flowers or card he left for her. Now, Amari and Sa’Mya are keeping their own promises to him while keeping his memory alive through A Higher Promise.

Now, five months after starting A Higher Promise, the sisters have sold over 5,000 signs, managing to reach all 50 states with their business. They spent most of their summer and now their after school hours going through sign orders while working on their website and social media presence.

With the expansion in their business’ popularity, instead of placing the black heart stickers on each sign individually and shipping them personally, they now go through a distributor. The sisters have made connections with multiple local churches and even Donutology, hosting sign distributions at their locations.

Each sign is priced at $10, the profit from their business has been going to the sisters’ college education funds, and they’re looking to begin donating more of the profits to local nonprofits like The Learning Club.

In addition to selling the signs, they’ve been using their Instagram and social media presence, @ahigherpromise, to partake in other supportive actions like promoting Kansas City’s Black Business Saturdays. On Saturdays, they’ll post about different local Black-owned businesses such as Loray Easterwood Realtor and Eat Her Cupcakes, featuring information about the business and a quote from the owner.

Currently, Amari is working on a new website for A Higher Promise that she plans to have up and running by December. The site will break down the history of the Black Lives Matter movement and educational resources for the reader, with articles she included to help educate people about racism and how they can help move the conversation forward to make people more aware of racial injustice.

In the future, the sisters hope to expand their business to promote a range of other social issues, like LGBTQ+ rights and women’s rights. 

Senior Reilly Kenney has known the Lewises from Stage Right for four years and agrees that in this predominantly white community, there’s not enough attention paid to working on diversity and inclusion. Living in Johnson County and attending an 85% white school, Kenney’s proud to now see the signs all across yards in the East community and believes they are a big step towards starting conversations about recognizing white privilege.

“In this area, I feel like our eyes aren’t very open to other perspectives,” Kenney said. “We don’t have a very deep understanding of what might be going on in other parts of the country at that moment, or in the past, and [the signs] help us open our eyes and understand one another and really start to recognize how we can make a difference.”

The biggest surprise to the sisters was the amount of support they’ve received. Both Amari and Sa’Mya were shocked at the rapid pace A Higher Promise grew, and the number of people they’d never met who wanted to buy their signs. Sa’Mya wasn’t just shocked at that, but also at the number of white people living in predominantly white communities who were focused on making change.

But for two teen girls, it hasn’t been easy. Amari and Sa’Mya struggled watching their peers relax and enjoy their summer while they were busy packaging and shipping signs or holding a sign pick-up event. A business is a lot to take on, especially as teens still in school.

But both of the girls saw that the outcome of their work far outweighs any social sacrifice. Amari and Sa’Mya know that even when they’d rather just go watch a show or stop feeling the pressure of being a leader in this movement, they’re making change through A Higher Promise for another young Black woman tired of facing discrimination.

“We’re still teenagers,” Amari said. “And so there are things that we want to do like watch TV, or just have time to ourselves. So I will say that the hardest part was kind of giving up our summer, but at the end of it, it was really worth it.”

With all the work they put into the business, Amari and Sa’Mya are proud of the message they’re spreading and the impact it’s leaving in Johnson County — and around the country.

“Especially in Johnson County, where people may be afraid of stepping outside of whatever everybody else is saying, I feel like the black heart is like this safe way of saying, I think… different,” Amari said. “And [the sign is saying] what I think is that all people matter, including Black people, including undocumented people, including wrongly convicted felons, including whoever.”