The Springfield-Greene County Park Board and Timmons Hall will host Freedom Classroom 101 Friday, February 7, from 11:15 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. It will be live at Timmons but will also be livestreamed at CityView. (Space is limited, and registration is full). The two will be part of a meet and greet at the Library Center Saturday, February 8, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Michele Skalicky: Freedom Classroom 101 is Friday morning at 11. It goes to 1:15, and it's going to feature two guests. Tell me about the speakers for that event.
Christine Peoples: Vivian Gibson, she's the author of The Last Children of Mill Creek. And it really is an account of how she felt about her community coming up. It's beautifully done. You can really see yourself in it. I can, you know, being a person of color, I think that everybody could see themselves in it. But it's like through a little girl's eyes. And I believe that because of that curiosity, and that's why I really connect with this, because I was that kid that asked questions to God, right? So she is actually talking about her community that was razed, and the community is gone now, but she really wanted to make a point to talk about, you know, this is where I was nurtured and I was, you know, I was loved and seen. And so she talks about her family through that.
Skalicky: Where are the speakers from?
Peoples: Both of both of our speakers are from Saint Louis. And and that's intentional because I want to reach out to the region, you know, and then Dr. Zachary, he's phenomenal. He's, I think...he's beyond the triple threat. But he is a producer, director and actor. And he also is a model. So he's in front of the camera and behind the camera. Gosh, he's portrayed some really heavyweights like Martin Luther King. I think that was a stage play that he did. And it was The Meeting was the name of it. And then the movie Honorable. You know, he's portraying Muhammad Ali in that movie, and he told me that he was only, well, Muhammad Ali was only an inch taller than him, and he actually he looked so much like Muhammad Ali. So he's had these opportunities to play these iconic figures, you know, in our history. And then also he's played different folks, and he's in, oh gosh, he's in movies. He's in just about everything that you can imagine, commercials. And so I really wanted to get his view on, in his own words, how he, as a man, a man of color, how he is seen, how he feels the language, because that's a big thing for me, is that in your own words, your language is different, everybody's language is different. But in the creative field, you're, you know, you're able to utilize that. You may not in your everyday, you know, job. But that's something that I think that is really important, and we will live stream it. And that's thanks to the City of Springfield.
Skalicky: That's great because I know that there's limited seating in Timmons Hall. So it sounds like a great couple of guests. You mentioned "in their own words," which is kind of the the series that this falls under. Talk about what that is.
Peoples: "In Our Own Words is — that's where we're going to that next level. Because when I started Freedom Classroom 101, it still means the same thing. It is a regional and national platform for speakers, and the idea that the speakers, they come in and they share what they're doing, and we get a glimpse, you know, through our map of what they're doing on these different cities and states. And so I wanted us to research, rethink and reimagine how we teach African American studies and how we perceive it. The idea to go up one step higher than that is "In Our Own Words." So it's like, are we utilizing black perspectives? Are we utilizing folks to tell their own stories, those primary sources, you know, the things that you dig into if you're a historian. So I really want it to be focused more on the research. Rethink and reimagine. Things are not always as they seem, but to get the story correctly, you always look at those primary sources, and I think it's more on the level of sharing emotionally how you felt in that time. In that period. I think that's more than keeping up with the exact date, because when folks start talking about their experiences, and they all are different because you're not going to be in the same space, in the same head space and the same, you know, demographics. So therefore, I think it's important for us to really encourage folks to do things in their own way. The bigger picture is, for me, it's write a book, you know, make it happen because we miss out because it doesn't come from that person. It comes from an interpretation of someone else. And you know, you miss out.
Skalicky: Talk a little more about Freedom Classroom 101. What's the idea behind it, and what does the future look like for the series?
Peoples: So the idea behind it is so that we could see Black people and their perspectives and what they're doing in their cities in spite of everything else. They've got their head down, and they're making it work because we have a generation that's coming up, you know, right behind us that we need to be able to pass down what we know — skill sets pass down that encouragement pass down, being seen and understanding how you need to be seen because I believe that there's responsibility that comes along with freedom. And so freedom was a word that I just absolutely love because it connects with the church when they had freedom schools. Freedom schools were citizenship schools. What was needed at the time. There was Sunday school, you know. And so the idea that for me, this was birthed, really, it's it's kind of amazing because when I think about it, shout out to OTC because they have amazing teachers. And I first thought about this, Miss Buck is a teacher, early childhood development teacher, and I took her class, and in her class, I don't play with food, right? So they were doing food art and I was like, "I cannot do this. You know, like people are starving." And so she said, "well, you don't have to do it if you don't want. I understand." So I sat down and just thought about it a little bit more, and I came back and I was like, "was this bought in a store or was this did it come straight from a farm?" So she said it was bought in the store. So, because she had told me it was a store bought apple, and I was like, well, there's pesticides, right? That was sprayed on it so I could use the peeling. So I could cut the peeling off. And so I always felt freedom in her classroom, right? And So I thought, look at that, that autonomy that I have because this teacher like gets it. So that's where I thought Freedom Classroom 101.
Skalicky: I love that. I love the concept behind that. I want to talk next about Timmons Hall. It was an historic Black church, Timmons Temple, west of Silver Springs Park for years, and then it was going to be torn down because of an apartment project. But a grassroots effort was successful, and the money was raised to move it to Silver Springs Park. What impact is that building having in its current location today?
Peoples: Well, the impact that it's had is that this is an artifact. This is a genuine artifact of the Black community, and this is home for them. They know about this space, and they're proud when they walk into the space and see that it's kept. It's kept immaculately. And that's just not by chance. I'm also an outreach minister, so when I was coming up, my grandparents, I saw how you're supposed to keep a church. We volunteered, you know, to clean it, all of that. And so when you can come into this space and you can feel the love that's in this space, it has an atmosphere of its own. But this is a space that the city recognizes, and it's open to the public, that is where I don't have any problem, because when people hear about, oh, wow, that's the church that's been moved and and wow, it's in Silver Springs Park. So it's like we actually put a living archive right in Silver Springs Park, which is a historic park. And so it's very easy because it was right up on the hill. And folks utilized this park that was only designated for the Black community. So they remember walking down the hill bringing food to for the picnic in the park. So it's a great connector. And so that's where I'm utilizing that connection with my programming. And so the programming that we see right now with the Freedom Classroom 101 is actually going to expand because — it's going to expand to have resource, teacher resource kits. We're not letting anything fall to the ground. And that's the history of the church. They were repurposing. They were doing what they needed. So we're, we're just emulating that same history. We're purposeful. We are, we're, we're light. We're light because it's almost like, you know, this is the overground railroad, and everybody is invited. Everybody is invited.
