ANNA JULIA COOPER CENTER
Summer Programs for Young People
Students in the Black Land Use and Food Supply summer program posing with Melissa Harris-Perry and Farmer Cee of Green Heffa Farms. July 2022
BLACK LAND and FOOD SUPPLY PROJECT, 2022
The Black Land Use and Food Supply Summer is an immersive one week living and learning project organized by the New Jersey based Grassroots Community Foundation in collaboration with the AJC Center.
Participants in the project spend one week engaged in experiential learning to explore the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to structural inequalities affecting Black communities, Black land ownership, and Black community food access.
Black Joy Camp Session, July 2022
BLACK JOY CAMP 2021-2022
In the summer of 2020 camps for young people across the nation were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, the second wave of the Movement for Black Lives swept across the country in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd.
In summer 2020 Professor Melissa Harris-Perry created a two month curriculum for her youngest daughter, Anna, who as a rising 1st grade student. In the summer of 2021 and 2022 the Anna Julia Cooper Center partnered with a private, independent school in Winston-Salem, NC to bring this BLACK JOY CAMP curriculum to a broader group of kids. Co-teachers Briana Winston and Melissa Harris-Perry modified the curriculum for week long sessions serving students from Pre K- 4th grade.
2017 AJCC Freedom School Scholar speaks at the closing event.
AJCC FREEDOM SCHOOL, 2017-2018
Responding to alarming statistics indicating substantial gaps in educational and economic access for third graders in Forsyth County, the Anna Julia Cooper Center hosted an innovative Children's Defense Fund Freedom School site in summer 2017 and 2018.
The program operated at Wake Forest University for six weeks from late June to early August to offer grade school students daily access to a college campus that is too frequently experienced as inhospitable by many in the low income communities of color in our city.
AJC Freedom School directly served 50 students from third to fifth grades and supported the capacity for another 100 students in two additional Winston-Salem sites.
A JC Freedom school was available to families at no cost and served students enrolled in 20 different schools across Forsyth county.
In 2019 Administration of Freedom School was transferred to the Office of Civic and Community Engagement at Wake Forest University and now operates as Wake Forest Freedom School.