Hope and Clarity: A conversation about young people and Ferguson with Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson
August marks the 7-year-anniversary of the Ferguson, Missouri uprising, a seminal event in the modern civil rights movement. The murder of Michael Brown, a Black teenager, by a police officer led to a year of protest and the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, a national thought leader in racial justice, community organizing, and movement building, was then-president of the St. Louis-based Deaconess Foundation. He was a pivotal figure in bringing the young people who were protesting on the streets together with community leaders. He co-chaired the Ferguson Commission, which released the “Forward Through Ferguson: A Path Toward Racial Equity” report calling for sweeping changes in policing, the criminal justice system, child well-being and economic mobility. Now the president and CEO of the Children’s Defense Fund, Starsky reflects on the lessons of Ferguson and how it informs his work and life today in a conversation with Raikes Foundation Executive Director Dennis Quirin.
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Dennis Quirin: It’s been seven years since the uprising in Ferguson and looking at the incredible change around race that’s happened within philanthropy, within the corporate sector, and within government since that time is extraordinary. While we know there was so much racial justice work being done pre-Ferguson, it was no doubt an inflection point. You were a pivotal figure on the ground in Ferguson, and I would love to hear how you are thinking about the experience of seven years ago now.
Starsky Wilson: This calendar date is hard, but it grounds me really significantly and soberly in a couple of points. First and foremost, Michael Brown should be alive today. His death is a reminder that movements are often catalyzed on the backs of Black pain, loss, and grief. These painful moments invite people to see things that have been theoretical or conceptual and make it real. This is real life. And real loss. And real injustice.There was something about the young people standing up and staying out until somebody gave them answers — it was so pure. It has some parallels to Montgomery — staying in the streets for over a year, in the same place, in the same community, on the same parking lots, in front of the same police department, and arresting the attention of the nation in a way that we had not seen in some time.
I think the role I ended up playing was that of a connector. There were intergenerational dynamics and sector divisions in the community, and I ended up standing at the center of all of that — trying to bring together philanthropy, the faith community, and folks in the neighborhood who were willing to stand in those intersections and not leave. For me, a lot of that was informed by a work by Dennis Dickerson. His book Militant Mediator is an attempt to reclaim the story of Whitney Young (the leader credited with revitalizing the Urban League when he became president in 1961). Young had been written off by many as too conservative, as part of the system, but Dickerson frames his work in historical conversation with Stokely Carmichael on one side, Dr. King on another, that there had to be someone that mainstream folks would engage in conversation and Whitney Young played that role for philanthropy. I think that there are lessons there about where we can stand if we’re willing to be uncomfortable and stand between and among people who normally wouldn’t stand with one another. It’s not like these concepts didn’t exist before, but they came to life in Ferguson.
But bringing it back to the young people, we owe a debt of gratitude to the young leaders in Ferguson who, in many ways, remain unnamed because they chose to be a mass rather than to be individual personalities. One of the responsibilities of the leader in adaptive times is to hold the disequilibrium long enough that people learn and begin to change behavior. If young folks had not stayed in the streets for over a year, I don’t know that we would have paid attention long enough to still even be talking about Ferguson.
Dennis Quirin: How did the experience of 2014 shape the way that you performed your role at Deaconess in the years after, given what you observed and saw?
Starsky Wilson: The jarring image of seeing Michael Brown’s body on the ground took me to a personal place to frame my professional reaction. I lost my brother to community violence, he was murdered and seeing that image reminded me of him. All the things I’ve been taught up to that point about how to operate in philanthropy were how to conform to the white dominant culture. I was 34 years old, and I replaced a 60-something white, straight, male preacher who had been there for 15 years. But in many ways, that moment allowed me the freedom to just stop the code switching and be who I was because my personal narrative was more appropriate for the moment. It was more important. I’ve been well-trained in navigating the white dominant culture that pervades philanthropy. The most powerful thing that the Ferguson uprising did for me was to allow me and free me to operate to the fullness of my gifts and my humanity as a leader and not try to reflect somebody else’s leadership.
It made it awkward for some other folks who wondered why I was on the street at 3:00 a.m. with young people. That’s not what you do as a foundation executive. On the other hand, some young people would ask me questions like, “Why are you standing next to the governor?” One person told me, “We’re praying for you. They’re going to try to take your soul.” It opened up other opportunities and doors to build trust with people that I didn’t know previously. In some cases, it led to being invited to tables that I did not know existed. All these experiences taught me lessons for the way forward, but the most significant one is that I am shaped and formed by experiences in life for the moments that I find myself in. I should never disregard or seek to diminish those, and I’ve got a responsibility to help others or to allow for others to show up in the fullness of their lives and experiences so that we might see things differently, openly, maybe more even transcendently together.
Dennis Quirin: That’s really powerful, Starsky. I’d love to talk more about the dual roles you played. One was helping to make credible the activists in the street to the stakeholders and power brokers that you had access to. And then another version that you didn’t talk as much about is how you go the other way. We’re in this moment now, this tug of back and forth around competing ideas of who this country is for, and how much bigger our tent needs to be — about how we reach people in the middle. How has that played out for you?
Starsky Wilson: I came to know and partner with the Children’s Defense Fund because of the Ferguson uprising. Deaconess brought a group of young people from Ferguson to Washington, DC, to speak at a summit of faith leaders to talk to them about the reality of their experience in Ferguson. We wanted to invite these leaders to be responsive to their realities. The late Dr. C. T. Vivian, who had been with us in Ferguson, called me over to him after our discussion. Marian Wright Edelman joined us later to talk and she said, “Let’s go have fish.” Fish is significant to me because I’m a minister in the Christian tradition. When the disciples were found fishing, Jesus called them away. We all left the table and went to have dinner and began to build a relationship that then blossomed into a programming partnership that was built around two critical elements at CDF.
The first was related to children and developing them through freedom schools and engaging young adults in organizing. The second piece was around religious organizing. Why do I bring those up in that story in that way? Because, for me, this connection, this opportunity to engage people in the work and expand the conversation requires some targeted and focused commitments, which operate out of moments of mobilization. This responsibility to connect the voices of people who are impacted to people who have the responsibility to set the vision is part of how we expand the tent and the conversation. If we as leaders skip that step and don’t bring the folks most impacted into conversation then we’re going to keep getting mediocre milquetoast conversations about policy, about institutional incremental change that are not worthy of this moment.
When I say “leader” or “policy maker,” I’m also talking about those of us who steward institutions. I’m talking legislators, I’m talking other elected officials, I’m talking executives. These are people who make things happen through implementation and coming up with the rules. When we always start with the rule makers, we get it wrong.
Dennis Quirin: We’re in a unique time in our history as a nation and in our history in humanity across the globe. There’s so much that is troubling and there’s a lot of hope. I’m curious, what gives you hope in these times?
Starsky Wilson: One thing James Baldwin always said about turbulent times is that Black people are never surprised by this country not living up to its stated creed, or by the notion that the idea of America is indeed yet still an idea that it’s not quite worked itself out. Black people weren’t surprised by January 6th. I, too, am not surprised. Young Black people coming up today are clear-eyed about what America and its capitalistic structures are. They know that Western democracy is uniquely tied to events of trauma for this generation and to economic crisis for those who are coming in, doing all the things we asked them to do by getting education, in deferring gratification. That they are not surprised by things that might be shocking to others gives me hope.
They are the rising majority that a true multi-racial democracy will be built by. They see things so very clearly. They will shape an American identity, an ideal that is much more grounded than the ones that we have grown up with. Their clarity gives me hope. Their complexion gives me hope. The composition of this generation and how they are fitted together gives me hope. That’s why I’m really glad to be dropping my bucket at CDF right now. I get to spend all my time with them.
