Kids imagine famous lives from Black history
In the gymnasium of an Orlando homeless shelter, 9-yearold Laray’a Mondesir dons a thick cream-colored robe and printed head wrap and shuffles nervously to the microphone, her first time before an audience.
“I was born into slavery,” she begins, introducing a tale of brutality and heroism. “I was a conductor for the Underground Railroad.”
Laray’a, normally brimming with energy, makes for a soft-spoken but stoic Harriett Tubman, for which she earns enthusiastic applause from parents, siblings and staff at the Orlando Union Rescue Mission, where the children delivered their presentations Wednesday night.
Laray’a was followed by pintsized versions of Coretta Scott King, Shirley Chisholm, Maya Angelou and Thurgood Marshall, whose tenuous beard kept threatening to fall off.
But this tribute to Black History Month was not just a chance to play dress up. For children of color, disproportionately impacted by family homelessness, it was an opportunity to identify with some of the nation’s most selfless, brilliant and inspiring leaders, whose skin tones happen to match their own.
“It’s nearly unbearably cute,” said Fred Clayton, the mission’s president and CEO. “But it’s also profound.”
For Nevaeh Cintron, the 9-yearold who portrayed King — the author, activist and civil rights leader married to Martin Luther King Jr. — it was “exciting.”
“A lot of girls wanted to be this ballet dancer,” she said. “I forget her name. But when I read about Coretta Scott King, I really liked her. And I wanted to be somebody
like that.”
The idea came from professional photographer Ane Marie Tierney, of Phoenix, who stopped at the mission on a recent trip to Florida with her fiancé. They wound up staying for nearly two weeks, tutoring the school-age kids, leading Bible studies, helping in the preschool and serving meals.
Tierney suggested the children, most of them in elementary school, each choose a historical or heroic figure and be individually photographed in costume, striking a pose like their character once did.
And each Wednesday in February, the children put on a presentation offering a snapshot of history.
Tamiyah King, 7 — in a flight jacket, cap and scarf — became Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman and first Native-American to hold a pilot license. Coleman, the daughter of share-croppers, attended flight school in France after American schools rejected her for being Black and a woman.
“She was really cool,” Tamiyah said. “But this hat is itchy.”