Sherrell Dorsey

Upper Hand


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today.

      She stressed the importance of possibility, and she did this well with how she shaped our “village.” Growing up in a middle‐class Black family with others who had migrated meant that our parents were keen on exposing us to “Blackness” outside of Seattle. Representing a very small percentage of the total population meant that we had all grown accustomed to being one of very few Black or brown students in a classroom. For us, underrepresentation, outside of our immediate homes and circles, was the norm.

      A group of volunteer parents and their children would spend a few Saturdays a month with us. We'd dig through history books, as they helped us contextualize the lacking information on African American experiences our classrooms were neglecting to share. We learned about the economic and cultural contributions of Black Americans. We designed projects centered around group economics and how building community wasn't just a nice thing to do, but was part of our responsibility to work together to progress and support our neighbors. We hosted car washes, where we would sell stock in our informal business to our family members in order to help us purchase supplies. We developed business plans using a curriculum designed by the national student entrepreneurship education program Junior Achievement.

      I hated not being able to sleep in on Saturday mornings. Instead of letting me watch cartoons and eat cereal, Mom dragged me to class, or a board meeting, or anything that did not include me staying home and playing with my friends.

      Looking back, I now appreciate the environment and understand the privilege of learning and growing in the community I did, and the intentionality our parents instilled as they shared responsibility in our growth, development, and leadership.

      Black Seattle worked hard to ensure that Black and brown kids growing up in a mostly white city had access to cultural as well as educational opportunities they might not otherwise have experienced.

      Annual fundraising efforts to take students on tours of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were organized by alums, and local organizations that aided in exposing students to college options helped to cover fees. Black‐owned businesses like the Wellington Tea Room in Columbia City served as a staple for Black community gatherings, parties, fundraisers, nightlife, and debutante balls.

      Family friends with elder children became immediate surrogate older siblings and mentors, filling me with stories about the software games and programs they were developing at their respective schools and boasting about their co‐op and internship programs at companies like General Electric. They filled me with dreams of a life of success and capabilities through what I could build with my mind and my hands—just like my grandfather.

      Fortunately, I would get a chance to do just that.

      The program would provide training, paid internship opportunities, college prep support, and a $1,000 scholarship for each year of program completion. Best of all, there was no cost to families. For a single parent who needed to keep a rambunctious teenage daughter busy and on the road to college (with added financial support, of course), my mom needed little coercion to add my name to Millines Dziko's initiative.

      I was accepted and started the introduction to technology programs, taking apart and learning the different components of the computer, eventually spending time learning things like C# programming, a bit of JavaScript, ASP.NET, and my favorite class, network administration.

      TAF ran the duration of the school year, with summers dedicated to paid internships with local technology companies. Twice per week, I'd hop the 48 bus from Franklin High School in Seattle's South End and get off at Judkins and 23rd in front of Parnell's corner store in the Central District—the same community in which I'd attended the Delaney Learning Center just a few short years prior. Classes ran from 3:30 to 5:30, which meant long days juggling classes and homework and taking the bus back home to the South End.

      Both were predominately Black and brown neighborhoods of mixed‐income economic situations and social paradoxes, harboring stories of gang violence and community picnics, Black, Hispanic, and Asian‐owned businesses contrasted with street‐corner weed dealers, poverty, and affluence.

      Today, the TAF Academy is a public 6th‐ through 12th‐grade learning campus and operates as one of the leading public STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) schools and consults with school districts around the country. Over 75 percent of the students are students of color, and many come from households where English is not their first language. Over 95 percent of students graduate on time and 100 percent of students are accepted to a two‐year or four‐year college.

      TAF also runs a fellowship program teaching a body of diverse current and future instructors' best practices for delivering a STEM curriculum to kids of color. Two of my cousins attended and graduated from both the middle and high school programs.

      I spent a great deal of time between the South End of Seattle and the Central District. This wasn't an accident. Most of Seattle's Black and brown communities lived between these two neighborhoods.

      In the 1960s, Seattle was roughly 92 percent white. Over 60 percent of the Black population pushed into Seattle's Central District (the CD, as it was called colloquially). By the 1970s, that number had swelled to 73 percent Black residents.

      Despite its densely populated area close to downtown, amid the suburbs, it was an undesirable location outside of the Black community. The area anchored Black homeowners and their families, as well as the Black business community.

      My grandfather purchased his first home with his second