» Joyce Kenner, a Dayton native, faces calls to resign from top Chicago high school,
— After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, an 11-yearold Joyce Kenner witnessed people take to the streets in her hometown of Dayton, “for the same things we are marching for today.” She recalls her father writing “black-owned business” across the window of his record store so protesters would spare it from damage.
More than 50 years later, Kenner is the now the long-serving principal of Whitney Young, one of Chicago’s most selective high schools, named for a civil rights leader. She is also the mother of a black son who once had to explain to police that he had a baseball bat in his trunk because he played for the Whitney Young team.
In recent weeks, as protests gripped her adoptive city after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Kenner has been working and babysitting her granddaughter. But in some ways, she said, the country feels like it did during the civil rights struggle of the ’60s. She asked her son, now 30, if he thought there had been progress.
“His response was, ‘Absolutely,’” Kenner said. “We have a black police chief. We have a black mayor. We have a black CEO of Chicago Public Schools . ... But we still have racism in our society and black men being targeted for no reason at all.”
Yet Kenner, who previously worked for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition, has not been immune to criticism for her response to Floyd’s death and more broadly her leadership at Whitney Young, where she also spent five years as assistant principal.
Now, after 25 years at the helm of Whitney Young, she finds herself the target of an online petition, posted by unnamed “disappointed alumni,” calling for her to resign, claiming she has “silenced student activists speaking against all forms of injustice. Her silence and her enabling of the systematic oppression that her black and low-income students face should be condemned.” So far it’s gained more than 800 signatures.
Kenner says she’s “never tried to silence a student,” citing her open-door policy as the reason she’s still at Whitney Young. Further, she calls it “nonsense” to say she doesn’t support Black Lives Matter.
“You could go by your experience, and the only thing I’ve ever tried to do is get our black kids educated so they have the opportunity to be part of this world,” Kenner said.
She said she received dozens of messages from parents and alumni who support her and want her to stay.
“Nobody is going to push me out. I’m not resigning. I still have a lot of work to do for my African American students,” Kenner said.
School reputation over student wellbeing?
Anyone who runs a high-profile institution for as long as Kenner is bound to have detractors, and she has weathered her share of controversies over the years.
Some who signed the resignation petition cited her history at Whitney Young, claiming she has “worked to sweep the injustices ... under the rug” and “consistently puts the perception of the school by the general public over the well-being of her students.”
Other critics have focused on more recent events. Several students told the Tribune they were offended by statements Kenner made in a video address about unrest sparked by George Floyd’s killing, in which she asked that if students do protest, they not participate in violence or looting, and said the way to seek change is to get a degree and get a “seat at the table.”
“We can’t have a seat at the table if we’re dead because we were shot by a cop,” one senior said, who added she doesn’t want Kenner to resign but that students deserve a bigger voice.
In a letter to administrators, some members of the senior class wrote they hoped Whitney Young would not be neutral while students demanded justice, voicing frustrations that Kenner initially rejected a video submitted for the school’s virtual graduation in which a student holds up a sign in support of George Floyd while singing the national anthem.
After hearing from her students and trying to understand their concerns, Kenner said she decided to allow the video.
Kenner said she has tried her best to support students and is responsive to other viewpoints.
“If one student was negatively impacted by my statements or my non-actions, then I have to address that,” she said.
Always the first one in line — starting at birth
The firstborn of a set of triplets, Kenner has always been a natural leader with a love for children, her siblings said. Even their birth, to a 19-year-old mother and 18-year-old father, made headlines.
“I’m not sure when the last triplets were born in Dayton, so it was really big news,” said Janice Allen, another one of the triplets. “We were always in the spotlight.”
The three had to walk 10 city blocks to get to grade school, and Kenner always got there first, said the youngest triplet, James Dorsey.
“She’s always been the first one in line,” he said, “always been aggressive in her mindset in terms of opinion, and she works hard in what she believes in.”
When King was shot and killed in Memphis in 1968, the triplets were young and, said Allen, “I don’t think we understood the gravity of the moment.”
But, she said, “We looked at how sad people were around us, that looked to Dr. Martin Luther King as our hero.”
Dorsey remembers riding his bicycle to Third Street in Dayton and looking at the damage from looting sparked by King’s death, unable to understand why people would tear up their own neighborhoods.
Kenner recalls trying to understand why “this man who had stood for peace and unity was gunned down.” Her mother was from Mississippi, and though the family didn’t talk a lot about race issues, she would relay stories from her own mother and grandmother about their experiences living in the Deep South and about lynchings there.
“Those discussions weren’t necessarily had, but you saw. So now, (after) 50 years, it’s a different environment where now the discussion is had,” Allen said. “You don’t have to talk to feel racism, you don’t have to speak it. You feel it as an African American person on a day-to-day basis, but it’s painful to talk about.”
Their early jobs were at their father’s three record stores. Kenner said she rarely speaks about the fact that, later in life, he was imprisoned for a drug conviction.
He “is still my hero,” she said of her late father. “He had to do what he had to do as a black man to support his family, and he did it well. All of my sisters and brothers were educated.”
She said she’s tired of trying to explain her position in life, and that all she’s been through has made her a better person.
“My father served 11 years in prison. If I don’t understand about black people and oppression, nobody else does,” Kenner said. “Nobody can tell me ... I don’t support the cause or that I don’t understand the cause.”
Kenner points out that, as far as she knows, she was the first CPS principal to let students kneel during the national anthem.
A high school cheerleader, Kenner never really stopped cheering, now supporting her students at sports games, chess tournaments, debates, wherever they want her to be, she said.
She sees her nearly 2,200 students today as brilliant, passionate, organized and more social media-savvy than their predecessors.
“I think the issues have impacted them more greatly than they did before, and now they have found a way for their voices to be heard,” she said. “Sometimes it’s painful for us as adults in authoritarian positions to accept how our students advocate their positions, but I listen, I reflect, I hurt.”
She recognizes that not all students agree with her but said she tries her best “to make sure that every student’s needs are addressed.”
“Have I failed in some things I’ve tried to do? Absolutely. Have I apologized? ... Absolutely. But I try to be the very best person that I can be, and for somebody to call for my resignation I think is narrow-minded.”