{"id":6930,"date":"2025-01-29T09:17:15","date_gmt":"2025-01-29T14:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/?p=6930"},"modified":"2025-01-29T09:23:19","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T14:23:19","slug":"graduate-says-modjeska-simpkins-school-builds-leaders-armed-with-knowledge-ready-to-do-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/2025\/01\/29\/graduate-says-modjeska-simpkins-school-builds-leaders-armed-with-knowledge-ready-to-do-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduate says Modjeska Simpkins School “builds leaders armed with knowledge ready to do battle”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dianna Freelon-Foster<\/strong>, 2024 graduate<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chair, Southern Partners Fund<\/p>\n\n\n

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I count myself lucky to have attended the Modjeska Simkins School<\/a>. I was introduced to the life of Modjeska Simpkins through my fellow Southern Partners Fund<\/a> Board member Brett Bursey<\/strong>. Before 2022, I had never heard her name, and I consider myself quite knowledgeable about the history of the movement of Black radical organizing. After all, I am in the state of Mississippi, the state Dr. Martin Luther King <\/strong>said was ‘sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression\u2019 and as Nina Simone sang, \u2018for everybody knows about Mississippi, goddam.’\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I was pondering (really soul, mind, and heart-searching) over what I wanted to say about the school, the voices in my head (I\u2019m not hallucinating) were those of Fredrick Douglas<\/strong> (emancipation speech on British West Indies 1857) and Sherrilyn Ifill (post-election in November 2024), which were summed up by my fellow student Nilanka Seneviratne<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0He wrote, \u2018Much of the status quo is rooted in years of oppression and struggle. We are not the first in this fight and we will not be the last\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note again the dates of those voices in my head 1857 and 2024 which span 167 years. We are not the first and we will not be the last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American lawyer, civil rights activist, former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and professor at Howard University Sherilynn Ifill<\/strong>, the day after the 2024 election said, \u2018It wasn\u2019t the Electoral College. It wasn\u2019t gerrymandering or even voter suppression. America was undone this week by the disease that sits in our national DNA: white supremacy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From its very beginnings, our country has either embraced white supremacy or made compromises to accommodate it. Right there in the first Article of our Constitution is the 3\/5 Compromise, the agreement to count enslaved Black people as 3\/5 of a person to accommodate the interests of those whose livelihood was premised on extracting free labor from enslaved Black people. And so, we are here because far too many in this country have believed that a healthy democracy can accommodate white supremacy. Last night Americans learned what I have insisted for some time \u2014 we can either compromise with white supremacist ideology or have a healthy democracy. Not both.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was confirmed for me in my learnings from the Modjeska Simkins School were that South Carolina’s state, local, and federal policies’ impact was the ideology of white supremacy \u2014 not as a disease or sickness but as a planned strategy (history) of building unjust economic and political power for the few deemed worthy because of their maleness and whiteness (justification). \u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has brought us to this critical juncture, not just nationally, but internationally. And without the undergirding of institutions like the Modjeska Simpkins School that builds leaders and followers armed with knowledge ready to do battle strategically and tactically, many of our children and children\u2019s children will certainly suffer and pay a price.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution requires serious study while simultaneously working to dismantle and rebuild local, state, and federal structures. The Modjeska Simpkins School offers this as we move forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dianna Freelon-Foster, 2024 graduate Chair, Southern Partners Fund I count myself lucky to have attended the Modjeska Simkins School. I was introduced to the life of Modjeska Simpkins through my fellow Southern Partners Fund Board member Brett Bursey. Before 2022, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-network-newsevents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6930"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6934,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6930\/revisions\/6934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}