Brenda Palms Barber, the 2012 Rachel B. Noel Distinguished Visiting Professor, stood before the audience at Shorter Community AME Church in Denver last Monday and confessed that she initially wondered what she would say about herself.
“Sometimes it’s hard to come from behind your presentation,” she said during a keynote address and Hope for the Future Awards ceremony. “But I decided that Rachel would absolutely be encouraging me, ‘Girl, you get out there and tell your story.’ ”
Over the course of her talk, Barber recounted how her jobs program in an inner-city Chicago community provides hope and a paycheck to ex-offenders and others through an unlikely pursuit: harvesting beehives to produce top-notch honey and personal care products.
Joan Foster, dean of the School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, said Barber was a “natural” for the professorship, which the College established to honor Noel, a civil rights pioneer.
Noel, who died four years ago at age 90, was a Denver school board member who she set in motion the events that led to the desegregation of the city’s public schools. She joined the College in 1969, and chaired the African-American Studies Department from 1971-80. President Stephen Jordan said of Noel, “It was in her DNA to challenge the status quo to make a difference.”
Recipients of Hope for the Future Awards in recognition of their efforts to make a difference were Tuskegee Airman Lt. Col. James Harvey III; Denver Mayor Michael Hancock; and Carlotta Walls LaNier, the youngest of the Little Rock Nine, the group of African-American students who challenged the color barrier at Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The program was marked by stunning performances by the Metro State Choir and the Community Choir, comprised of singers from several churches.
In introducing Barber, Winston Grady-Willis, chair of the Department of African and African American Studies, quoted her as saying, “It’s hard to see yourself as successful when you are simply doing what needs to be done.”
What needed to be done in Chicago’s North Lawndale community was to find a way to create jobs. The unemployment rate there is about three times higher than the city average. Barber, who became executive director of the North Lawndale Employment Network (NLEN) in 1999, soon discovered why. A 2001 study found that nearly 60 percent of North Lawndale residents had some involvement with the criminal justice system.
“This community isn’t lacking in a desire to work, but they simply couldn’t get work because of the X on their backs.”
She set up a workforce development program, “U Turn Permitted,” to serve this population. “But at the end of that training program did we have jobs? We did not. Not enough.” Employers were reluctant to hire ex-offenders.
“That was when I decided, I’ll have to become their first employer,” Barber said.
She thought about setting up a temp agency or a landscaping company, but the competition with thick. Then a friend suggested beekeeping, an accessible profession that “wasn’t going to exclude anybody.”
“I started talking to folks about it…everybody thought I was absolutely crazy.”
Not anymore. “Sweet Beginnings,” a subsidiary of NLEN, provides training and work through the production and marketing of honey and high-end skin care products containing honey under the beelove (formerly beeline) label.
Participants are enrolled for 90 days, gaining experience and the beginnings of an employment history, though some stay on with the company. Sweet Beginnings products are in Whole Foods stores in five Midwest states and it will begin selling them at O’Hare Airport -- where it recently established an apiary -- and possibly at Midway Airport as well.
“People who need a second chance,” Barber said, “can produce high quality work if given an opportunity.”
To view a slideshow of the community event at Shorter Community AME Church and Brenda Palms Barber's keynote address click here.
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