JUNIPER

"During my junior year of high school, my history teacher was the first Black teacher I had since I moved to a new district and there was a lot going on with Black Lives Matter and everything. I’m from the suburbs and it’s pretty conservative out there. There's a lot of isolation involved when things happen socially in the news and things like that. And she really stuck up for me. I’m involved a lot in my community and she helped me organize a bunch of different projects in my school that honestly wouldn’t have been passed without her help. We organized a Black Lives Matter mural that was going to be painted; it’s being painted post COVID. And also, a seminar on racial sensitivity at our school. It’s also targeted towards the parents. We’ve had a couple of racial incidents at our school that kind of got out of hand and made the news. We tried to better our school and she was very supportive of me academically and just honestly in my personal life. It’s nice to see Black women uplifting each other. We’re often pitted against each other. She was just a really strong role model to my family that I can depend on for any sort of advice or any support."