A Tipping Point for Quincy, Ill.

by Lisa Sharon Harper

January 22, 2007 | | Quincy, Illinois

Marla Ferguson was skeptical when organizers invited her to take part in preliminary meetings for the “Many Voices, One Goal Study Circle Project” in Quincy, Ill.

As executive director of Quanada, a local domestic violence and sexual assault agency, Ferguson and her staff have engaged in many dialogues dealing with issues of discrimination, usually to no avail. 

“I expected this to be just one more of those kinds of groups,” Ferguson says. “I wasn’t expecting very much from it because I just have not had the experience that these groups have been very productive or profitable.”

But she did come. And Ferguson was surprised by what she witnessed.

 

Participants in a study circle action forum hosted by the Quincy Human Rights Commission pick up pamphlets and bumper-stickers. (Photo: Steve Bohnstedt)

Quincy is a small town with big history. Currently home to 40,366 residents – about 95 percent white, 3 percent black and 2 percent “other” – Quincy was named after John Quincy Adams. With only the Mississippi river separating it from the antebellum South, a home in Quincy was once stop number one on the Underground Railroad.   

With this history, one might expect Quincy to be a bastion of progressive thought and inclusive activity.  But when community members pressed the city to rename 8th Street in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in the mid-1990s, latent prejudices were unveiled.  

“They were told, ‘It’s never gonna happen,’” says Melissa Holden, staff administrator with the Quincy Human Rights Commission.  And the renaming didn’t happen.

The Human Rights Commission was formed in 2000. Members of commission who had supported the street-naming effort continued to discuss the issue. They reviewed the process and decided to take up the cause again in 2005. A community coalition was formed.

The coalition met with enormous resistance. 

“People threw around the phrase ‘n-----  lover’ to a lot of our members,” Holden recounts. “We had anonymous phone calls to various members’ homes where people would say: ‘Go back to where you came from,’  ‘Why are you stirring up trouble?’ ‘You need to leave this thing alone if you know what’s good for you.’”

After tensions erupted in the city council chambers during a renaming hearing, a compromise was reached: Half the intersections on the street were given honorary Martin Luther King, Jr. signs. Half remained the same.    

The renaming confrontation left a fractured community in its wake. African American Quincy residents were particularly traumatized while negative feelings within the European American community persisted. The Human Rights Commission recognized an urgent need for racial healing. 

Ten years ago, Quincy residents engaged in a series of study circle-like dialogues. While the dialogue was good, it didn’t lead to important change in the community. But Holden was convinced that she could find a way to help people understand one another and work together. Her search led her to new resources from the Study Circles Resource Center —resources that help communities bring people of all backgrounds into dialogue on racism that is structured to support and strengthen measurable community change.

“Our commission became excited,” Holden recounts, “about the possibility of bringing a new and improved program to the community.” 

The commission brought together a diverse coalition of community leaders who led the effort to launch the study circles. After months of outreach to the African American community, it launched the project the week of Sept. 25, 2006.  Some 83 people participated in seven circles that ran weekly through Nov. 4. 

The Quincy coalition was among the first in the country to utilize the new discussion guide, and it worked. It provided a safe arena for honest dialogue that is laying the foundation for effective institutional change.

Susan McCormack, program director at Study Circles Resource Center, cautions that the new discussion guide “is only as effective as the organizing.” Leadership is key, McCormack says.  

Holden and the coalition led well. The coalition reached out into diverse segments of Quincy. It took almost a year to build trust in the African American community, deeply disillusioned by past disappointment and trauma. But, as a result of the coalition’s efforts, a diverse and influential group participated in the circles.

The new discussion guide helped participants grasp the concept of white privilege and systemic injustice. During the second session of the circle, Marla Ferguson, the African American woman who had been skeptical in the beginning, she heard a white woman tell how her parents talked to her from an early age about other ethnic groups, impressing upon her that she was better. 

“I never thought about people actually having to fight against that,” Ferguson marveled, “… having to work their way out of it.” 

The third session focused on inequity. Each group took part in an activity called “Move Forward, Move Back,” which is designed to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages in our country related to skin color or ethnic background. Beginning in a straight line, participants move forward or back in response to a series of statements about race and culture.

At the end of this exercise, people look around to see where others are standing. As a group, they talk about patterns they observe, why people end up where they are, and what this tells them about their community. The exercise exposes the false messages whites have received about the reasons other races don’t succeed. 

“It’s very painful,” Holden explains. “A lot of Caucasian people realize that they may have been sold a bill of goods all their lives, about how everyone is equal. [The exercise] makes it so clear that the playing field is not equal.”

One hundred people attended the action forum in November, including the mayor, an alderman, school board members, police department members and others. Six task forces were formed to address issues of education, leadership, government, religion, media, and miscellaneous cultural issues.

Each task force is currently setting priorities and identifying one or two action ideas that are practical and doable. Next they will create long-term strategic plans to move these points forward from vision to reality. Holden’s government task force, for example, will create advocacy groups to investigate possible differences in how people are treated within the law enforcement and criminal justice systems. 

According to Holden, the chief challenge the coalition faces is time itself. “It took Quincy nearly a year to [complete] the street sign issue and then another year to get the first circle started.  I expect similar timelines for the other issues.  I suspect we’ll start seeing some fatigue.”

In June 2006, the Human Rights Commission issued its annual report, pressing the city to complete and enforce an affirmative action plan. The city was in violation of its own ordinance requiring the mayor to “prepare, administer and interpret an affirmative action plan consistent with all applicable federal and state statutes, regulations and orders.”

A few weeks after the action forum, the police department announced a community forum to talk about recruiting more minority police officer candidates, the school district made a public announcement about their efforts to recruit more minority teachers, and the Human Rights Commission received the mayor’s affirmative action plan.

For now, fatigue seems a distant concern, and Holden is optimistic.  As she puts it, the study circles seem to have been Quincy’s “tipping point.” 

Learn more: Racial Equity