Before the headlines.

Before the celebrations.

Before the recognition.

We were here.

Working, learning, leading.

Building lives in places that didn't always make space for us.

Echoes of freedom exists because history doesn't live only in archives.

It lives in people, in parents hopes for their children, in mentors pointing the way in individuals becoming the first.

This documentary honors the many paths, backgrounds, and experiences that have shaped the African experience.

These echoes of freedom matter because it's easier to become what you can see, and you can't imagine what's possible without understanding what came before.

What you're about to watch is not the beginning.

It's a continuation, an acknowledgment, a reflection, an echo of freedom.

Enjoy.

The Lehigh Valley stands on monopoly land, part of Lenape hulking.

For thousands of years, Lenape people lived, farmed, and traveled along the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers.

In 1737, the Walking Purchase forced Lenape communities from this region, clearing the way for European settlement.

In 1741, Moravians founded Bethlehem, a planned Christian community built on shared faith and shared labor, but it stood on taken land and relied in part on enslaved African and Afro-American people.

They laid stone, worked skilled trades, built structures that still stand in historic Bethlehem today.

In 1780, Pennsylvania's Gradual Abolition Act led to freedom for some enslaved people in Bethlehem.

By the early 1790s, slavery there had ended, but black presence did not.

Through the 1800s, black families established roots in Bethlehem, Allentown, and Easton.

As the region industrialized, black workers helped power its rise.

They labored along the Lehigh Canal and inside the furnaces of Bethlehem Steel, contributing to one of the nation's industrial giants.

Black women sustained families and strengthened community life through domestic work, service roles and community leaderships.

Opportunity grew, but access was on equal housing restrictions, limited job mobility and unequal tools shaped daily life.

Still, families built stability through homeownership, education, small business and mutual support.

Ensuring the valley's growth included their voices.

When heavy industry declined, the region adapted and black residents continued shaping the valley.

Echoes of freedom tells the story of those who carry that legacy forward.

Those benefiting from the sacrifices of the past and leading community today.

I'm from Easton, born and raised in Easton.

Both my maternal and paternal grandparents came to Easton in the 1920s.

So both my parents were born in Easton, so I'm really from Easton.

My uncle was the very first African-American firefighter hired for the city of Easton.

You have the World War two period.

Period.

First one.

My mother was the third African-American nurse hired at Eastern Hospital.

When she graduated from Easton High School in 1952.

She couldn't go to the school of nursing at Easton Hospital because they didn't accept black applicants.

A friend of hers went to Jersey City Medical School for nursing, and that's what got my mother there.

After I graduated from Easton, I went to Penn State University.

So I have a bachelor's in business administration from Penn State and also a master's in business.

And then went into workforce, married kids and all of that.

And then I decided I wanted to finish a terminal degree at the doctor level.

So I went to Drexel University.

So I made Drexel Dragon as well as a Nittany Lions.

Growing up, I never had a black teacher.

I never saw anyone that looked like me.

It wasn't until later in middle school that we literally had two pillars of educators in the Eastern School district, and that was Mr.

Bill Houston and Mr.

Alfred Dean Jones.

I'm a professor of business and economics at Northampton Community College, and also an adjunct faculty member at Muhlenberg College, teaching economics and professional business writing.

So it keeps me busy.

But beyond that, I do stay involved in the community.

Juneteenth is a celebration of emancipation for enslaved Africans.

I didn't know anything about it.

Started to hear some inklings, and then I started to do some research and I thought, okay, you know what?

We need to, unveil this.

This this needs to be brought to the forefront.

So during the pandemic, everyone is sequestered.

I started to call some folks to say, hey, I'm interested in doing this.

It's going to be a part of the steering committee for this.

And we started working in 2020.

Everything on zoom.

And then launched in 2021 with the, Juneteenth Lehigh Valley.

We have parades, we have festivals, we have all those other kinds of celebratory things.

We have a scholarship program where we give educational scholarships, and it's important to see yourselves in the red, white and blue, because somewhere in that red, white and blue region, and you have to see and find the narratives that speak to you.

I was born in South Bronx.

My mother and father felt like it was just getting a little too dangerous and, needed to find a safer space to raise a family.

And so they moved to Lakewood, new Jersey.

When I left Lakewood, I went to, Lafayette College, had the opportunity to play professional football.

And so I tried out and ended up in Connecticut playing for the, the Arena League.

While I was there playing, I applied to Lehigh for graduate school and got in and started my career, in the education space.

I am the first superintendent of color outside of Allentown, in the history of the Lehigh Valley.

Obviously, my parents prioritized education 100%.

My father didn't even have a high school diploma.

I'm the first person in my family to get a doctoral degree.

Only the second to get a master's.

Beyond that, I was, the first African-American on the professional circuit in the Scottish Highland Games.

And, you know, I've been to some places where there wasn't another African-American face in the crowd.

And not one, not a single one.

As an African-American.

Definitely.

In this area.

You kind of, for good or bad, get used to, navigating spaces where you're the only or one of the few.

I think my time at Lafayette definitely prepared me to navigate some of those spaces that when I was fortunate enough to begin my administrative career in the Parkland School district, I was, I'm pretty sure the first, administrator of color in that district.

After leaving parkland and going to Liberty, I became the first principal of color in the history of the school, and that was an amazing experience, to, to lead, in the bathroom community and became, superintendent and also school there.

I always believed that we need to be in spaces where there's limited representation or no representation.

So that children can one day, I hope to to accomplish the same.

The arts has always been a part of me.

I think growing up in Jamaica, it's a part of your schooling.

So when I came to the States at the age of ten, by that point I just wanted to continue in the arts.

So I was in New York.

I was in school when I was in school.

I just wanted to get involved in anything related to the arts.

My outlet was writing, and I did songwriting at the time.

And then I met a friend of mine, and he was a producer at the time, and he said, you know what?

You're really skilled at writing.

Like, you should come and write with me.

At the time, I did not know.

He worked for Atlantic Records, and I started writing for the artists that he worked with, and things just took off from there.

My dad moved to the Lehigh Valley, bought a house, and he got sick.

And when he got sick, I decided that I wanted to be closer to him.

It was harder for me to transition from Brooklyn to the Lehigh Valley than it was for me to transition from Jamaica to Brooklyn.

So while it was great for my children and my husband, for me it was like, okay, what do I do?

I was like, what's missing here?

So then I started to get involved and meet meet people that were like involved in like the nightlife or networking and things like in the entertainment field.

And from there I started to host parties.

We would have like Caribbean nights every two weeks and we will bring out international artists to come out.

And it was a huge thing.

From there I'm like, okay, there is a disconnect that's happening between the Lehigh Valley and actually what's happening in the islands, right.

There isn't a natural bridge for them to come over or to actually display the culture of what's happening.

So then birth Caribbean Elite magazine people display the hidden gems of each Caribbean islands.

We will display the food.

We will display the people, the Caribbean artists are all of the arts.

It became the Vogue magazine of the Caribbean islands.

That's what I that's what I would call it like.

It was huge and still is.

And I sat down with my partners and we decided that we were going to start the Caribbean Music Awards, and now we're in year three, about to be a year.

For now.

We're on the beat while we are on the.

When Covid hit.

I remember being at home.

I just felt this nudge in my spirit that there needed to be a shift, that there was something that I needed to do.

And I realized that my kids at the time, while one would be like thriving during the lockdown, the other one was struggling.

Right?

And no one really thought about the mental health of children during Covid.

I remember locking myself in a room and within like 18 hours I came up, came up with this full strategy of how to start a nonprofit organization.

And using the tools that I've learned along the way to pour it back into children.

So with funding for the Foundation and the Healing Through the Arts program, we're using innovation as a way to address youth mental health.

So we were using art, right?

So we are doing music production, podcasting, film as a way for you to express themselves in these avenues and address their mental health and tell their stories.

Serving on fire.

Further, you're meeting families and children, and they're telling you stories about things that they need and what's lacking.

And they start to tell me, like, you need to go to the school board meetings and advocate for us.

So I started to show up at the school board meetings, and I would advocate, I would go up to the podium and tell them what's missing, how we need to support youth mental health, how we need to get arts back in the schools.

And I remember sitting in the audience one day, and I just saw a vision of me sitting in the seat.

I am the first female African-American woman to sit in that seat.

They trust that I'm going to do what's necessary to transition Allentown School District into a model school district.

I was born in Chicago.

Spent some time in new Jersey, and then I went to high school in Iowa.

And so I tell people that I was born of the city.

I lived in the suburbs, and then I lived in a small rural town of 600 people.

And so with those three things, that makes up who I am.

When I came here to the Lehigh Valley, I said, that represents kind of like how I grew up.

It has a urban, suburban and rural areas.

I introduced to this college, Simpson College, and the folks there, and then they recruited me when I was a freshman in high school.

I went to their summer camps and they said, you know, you have the voice of like an opera singer.

And lo and behold, that's when I went off to do I got my degree in music education, and I also sang opera.

I didn't really think of a lot of black folks who sang opera.

But in Iowa, there's a very famous singer, Simon Estes.

He's like one of the most famous black singer.

That was a mel, was from Iowa.

That really helped me understand that it was an opportunity for me.

I have a my master's degree in opera and my bachelor's degree in music education.

I went to Ocean County College to teach music, and when I was there for a few months, the vice president of academic affairs said, you have the mind of administrator.

However, I think you should be running our performing arts center.

So I started reading about all the books about arts administration, and I'm reading all the articles about arts administration.

And I said, okay, that's all nice, but what makes, me special was she saw me.

What can I bring to this role that was not, you know, here before.

And that's kind of how I looked at the role of arts administrator.

I was like, I can I look at it through the lens of a person with my background as a person that is not shackled with the education that other folks have.

I'm looking at as a as a lens of an artist.

I came here from Ocean County College.

So coming from there to here, I was able to take those skills that I learned to bring it here to Lehigh University.

At Zollner, we love connecting deeply with the folks here in our urban, suburban rural areas.

And so we do, high class, multidisciplinary performing arts.

We also are a partner, a key partner with Bethlehem Area School District for the Any Given Child program.

We also partner with, Lehigh Valley Health Network for our Riley Children's Hospital family series.

And we also started to do some work this current year and arts and wellness, partnering with Carnegie Hall and Well-Being concerts, and also the Lullaby Project.

One of the things I think is so important for the Valley is if they want more folks who are African-American, they have to recruit more African-American teachers across the Valley so that people feel like their kids can have that connection when they're there at the schools.

Black.

White.

Hispanic.

Asian.

Anyone who comes to our house, we treat them with love.

I was born in New York, but my father had a very strong propensity to move us from the inner city.

So I was born in Harlem and then to Newark, new Jersey, Trenton, new Jersey.

And somehow or another he got this big idea to integrate a community in a little town called Morrisville, Pennsylvania.

And so from kindergarten to about fourth grade, I grew up in Mooresville, the only black kid on the block.

And then we moved to a town called Willingboro, new Jersey.

And when people ask me where I from, where I'm from, I say I'm from Muhlenberg.

My father was a preacher, and so he was invited to come up and preach a sermon for our communion Sunday.

We were living in Willingboro, and he did that, and they liked him.

So they asked him to come back again and come back again.

He ultimately became the pastor of the church.

And so when I was getting ready to go off to college, then they moved up to the Lehigh Valley.

And when I came home, I came home to begin again.

I told my dad, six months, I'll be out of here.

And, during that six month time, I met her, say, six years we've been together.

Yeah, and 31 years we've been married.

Yeah.

I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and, I grew up in a neighborhood called Wilkinsburg.

We just fell in love with God's Word and studying God's Word.

And when we got married, he immediately went to Bible college.

And I immediately got pregnant.

And I had the benefit of watching my father, seeing him, and then coming home and hearing him, declare a message about God and God's love for me.

Was that was it?

So, went to Philadelphia College of the Bible right out of the gate.

And then from PCB went on to Somerset Christian College and got a degree in organizational leadership there and biblical studies.

And then from Somerset Christian College went to Palmer Seminary, which is the seminary of Eastern University.

And while I was there, was encouraged by my, advisor to consider the doctoral program.

But in the meantime, I took some classes at Princeton and graduated from Cornell University with some certificate and advanced work, as well as Penn State University.

At some point, I was working so diligently in ministry and he kept saying to me, baby, you're not.

You're not paying attention to your calling, and I need you to focus on what God has called you to do.

One of the my focuses in ministry was mentoring teen women, and I developed a curriculum for leadership and mentoring for our teens.

In January of 2005, the church took a vote for me to take over as a senior pastor.

And, I was we were very nervous.

But it was 100% vote, interestingly enough.

And my father, as a senior pastor, he trained us.

He and my mother trained us for years prior to that happening.

And so he passed away 30 days before the installation service.

My husband's resiliency and determination is one to be admired by myself and my children first, and then for others who get to watch from afar.

I think the flagship for me is the, the homeless shelter.

Yeah, that was birthed out of.

I was sitting in a systematic theology class and my teacher, my professor, basically said, hey, listen, some of you pastors are complicit as a complicit without.

And he said, well, you got warm buildings and there's cold bodies sleeping outside of your buildings, and they're empty, so you're complicit.

I'm sitting in the back of the class.

I'll tear runs down my arm.

I go back to church that Sunday and I said, hey, listen, we're starting a homeless shelter.

My wife became a HUD certified housing counselor, and we we provide, oh, mind calls you want to talk about?

Yeah.

We provide her first time homebuyer counseling services, as well as teaching the community financial literacy, budgeting and credit repair.

And just really giving them the information that they need, even tenant and tenant, tenant information, because a lot of people don't even know their rights as a tenant.

We have two food pantries, one in Easton, one in Stroudsburg.

They serve about 300 families, and it's an amazing opportunity to serve the community.

The question was asked, what will people feel when they come?

The greater shall we preach love?

Jesus said that it's the greatest commandment of them all.

Love thy neighbor as they love thy.

So often love, love, love God, love your neighbor, and love yourself.

I I'm not a Lehigh Valley native, but in January 26th, it'll be 25 years that my family's been in Bethlehem was born and partially reared in Shreveport, Louisiana.

My parents met there after coming to the United States from Nigeria when they were both in school.

Bada bing, bada boom.

First of five kids.

And then, familial opportunities and business opportunities brought my family to Bethlehem.

But I had a spark go out about mine, too.

When we came here, I was only 13 years old.

And to realize I came not long after the last case of the Bethlehem Steel to realize it be.

It came at a time of economic downturn.

We were initially at the corner of Fifth and Atlantic Streets in South Bethlehem, and then moved to Pier Street, where my parents still reside, and to see the neighborhood go from Eastern European immigrants or the children of those immigrants to predominately Hispanic to now where they're at predominantly Lehigh students.

It's been an interesting thing to see over this time.

I was born and raised here in Bethlehem.

My father's from Chicago.

My mom's from Jersey.

La la la la la la.

I went to Thomas Jefferson Northeast Middle School and Liberty High School.

And I will say that growing up, I would never thought I would have went into education in my adult life.

But here I am.

And, you know, education is is what it's about.

You know, that's one thing that no one could take away from, you know, talking about freedom and talking about progress and, and uplifting one another as education that it just it just worked.

It just worked.

I went back to liberty is special ed teacher.

And I was able to develop certain programs with community partners because we all came together to make sure that we were supporting children of color, or children that, of, of like a low economic status.

And if they want to go to college, what can we do to make the barriers to get them there?

The work that I do now is closely correlated to my youth here in Bethlehem.

So I'm the executive director or the chief executive officer of the Boys and Girls Club of Bethlehem.

I've served in that capacity for six years.

I love my job.

I get to be an extension of so many people's home.

In addition to that, running a 95 year old institution that has been a hallmark of Bethlehem.

I get to be a part of that tapestry of trust, helping forge great futures in Bethlehem.

My work with young people allowed me to go work for or work within the Bethlehem Area School District.

One of the things that I noticed is that there were times that the school would speak to parents, and there would be a disconnect, and there would be a time where parents would speak to the school and there be a disconnect.

And so I was offered the opportunity to join the Bethany School Board.

I became the first, African American female to be assistant principal at Freedom High School, which came with its challenges.

But I would say that I learned a lot of lessons.

I've met a lot of great people.

It was life changing.

It was life changing.

And being able to just have the time to hear the stories of people, to hear what's important to them and why, and then also being able to extend community resources, extend my own experience and knowledge so that barriers that might have been put in my way, they don't have to worry about that.

Right?

Who were some of your mentors?

Or maybe you had one experience where someone gave you that encouragement?

Ada Brady, Esther Lee, Willie Howard, so many names.

I could just go on and on.

But people who were part of my foundational experience here as a young person gave me the knowledge and the push to say, go out and do some things.

It takes a village to do something like this.

We have to acknowledge the atrocities of slavery.

You cannot get around that.

But that's not where the narrative ends.

And you've got to see what people who looked like you were able to accomplish.

I think a lot of times you have to be able to see someone that looks like you to in order to even imagine it.

They need to see it to be it.

Believe that it's a possibility to believe.

Yeah.

That's part of, for me.

What is so, inspiring that that Barack Obama became president.

But tonight, because of what we did on this day in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I had the benefit of watching my father, who was a ninth grade, drop out of high school, and he somehow found a way to graduate from Rutgers University.

I was the first black person to graduate from my high school in 1989.

I'm the first person in my family to get a doctoral degree.

My aunt made me who she wasn't my mom's best friend.

She's passed since made me.

Mom is not a name that will be written in the annals of time, for community advocacy.

But she took me to meetings and she took me out to places with the community events to show me that we we are in those spaces too.

Very proud to say my father was the first African-American attorney in the Lehigh County bar.

Don God show of Community Action, Lehigh Valley.

She walks up to me and she says to me, I see you up there.

You need to run.

I was elected at the time to sit in the seat for a year that I ran for four years won, and immediately after I won, I became president of the school board.

I am the first African-American woman to sit in that seat, a living legend.

Three years, three years.

I'm still in shock.

And what does legacy mean to you that somebody will call our name when we are no longer able to answer the role, and somebody else will say, and I knew them, and I loved them, and they loved the legacy I want to leave behind has to be seen in the children.

What do you mean by that?

They are the next whatever they do next.

That's my legacy.

I want to know that people have a warm feeling when, they talk about me when I'm no longer there.

I also want to make sure that the education space is a better space than it was when I started, because I've done something to help contribute to that.

I will say that we both have been around to know some great people, pillars of the community, family members, and being able to collect that history.

And it led us, but also to make sure that the generation behind us, our children and our you know, they also know as well we're leaving legacy by making a mark in every part of the family to realizing that you have to know when it's time to transition, being intentional about raising up another generation that we can pass the mantle to the arts, bringing people who are from different political backgrounds and different cultural backgrounds together, that we're not competing with one another.

That's the legacy I will love.

Legacy is where my children and my grandchildren and great grandchildren can read my epitaph and really see not everything was perfect, but that I continue to try to make a difference where I was the game changer between she and I. We have held hands with and sat with elders in this community, many who have been gone on 20 years plus that were first or pioneers or knew things that couldn't even be described today to future, future generations because they closed the door to that barrier.

That's a part of legacy, too.

We get to continue that.

I think that's what legacy, really means to me, that you be able to set a story that others can read and that they can be inspired by.