Rice’s mother building center to nurture youth, honor son
Tamir Rice was 12 when gunned down by Cleveland police.
Walk in the CLEVELAND — front door of 6117 St. Clair Avenue today, and you’ll see an empty space with a patterned linoleum floor and nicked paneling that covers nearly every wall of the twostory brick building.
Samaria Rice sees something different.
The mother of Tamir Rice envisions a warm and energetic space filled with children. They are painting and drawing with pastels. They are beating on African drums and bowing violins. They are performing plays they created in an intimate theater.
The children inside what will become The Tamir Rice Afrocentric Cultural Center will be mentored and nurtured and taught how to dissect and participate in political systems, something Rice said she never learned in school but was forced to learn more than three years ago to speak up for 12-yearold Tamir after he was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer in the recreation center park where he played daily.
For Rice, the center is a gift to Tamir. It’s solid assurance that while he never grew to be a man, his legacy will not fade.
Rice said some people have discouraged her from opening the center, or questioned her ability to pull it off.
The 41-year-old mother may have only an 8th-grade education, but she brushes off those naysayers just like she did the annoyance last week of someone putting superglue in every one of the locks on the center’s newly purchased building.
“I don’t pay no attention to them,” Rice said bluntly. “They can’t beat me for the simple fact that their child wasn’t killed by the state. I’m going to do it through the grace of God and I’m going to do it because the city of Cleveland gave me no choice but to do it as far as building my son’s legacy and keeping his legacy alive.”
What some might not understand is that being hands-on with the work of the foundation and the center is an important part of Rice’s grieving and healing process, Amanda King, an activist artist, who consults for the foundation said.
King is the founder of Shooting Without Bullets, which uses photography and performance to allow black and brown teens to process and express their feelings about complex social problems and injustices they experience.
In terms of education and credentials, Rice might not fit the normal mold of an executive director running a foundation, King said. It’s also hard for her to trust others with something as deeply personal as honoring her son.
Sweet sixteen
Next month, Rice is throwing a “Sweet Sixteen” party for the milestone her son can’t celebrate. She’s invited the public to help her honor Tamir with musical and spoken word performances, and to help raise $21,000 to renovate the more than 3,500-square-foot building purchased in March by the Tamir Rice Foundation.
Built in 1920, the building has good bones but needs some new windows, drywall and a stage for performances. She hopes to complete work and open the center in 2019.
Rice hesitated initially before deciding to put the center in Cleveland, she said. But her son was born and raised here, and she wanted “to make sure that Cleveland doesn’t try to erase the memory.”
Rice created the foundation that bears her son’s name in 2016. Later that year, a judge approved a $6 million settlement of the wrongful death lawsuit she’d filed against the city and the two officers involved. After lawyer fees and costs and payments to other relatives, Tamir’s estate was left with about $1.8 million.