This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights Kristen Jeffers’s(that’s me’s) Black Queer Feminist Urbanist commentary on one key issue every week. This week I’m dipping into my vault of prior posts and newsletters to celebrate Black History Month. Below, you’ll find my post from June 23, 2013 — The Common Man’s Legacy for a City— written just weeks after I lost my father, plus, a few of my current thoughts on this post and the message it shared. I’m also thankful for sponsorship for this newsletter from Greater Greater Washington and many of you who are Patreon supporters.
The Common Man’s Legacy in a City (Originally Published on June 23, 2013)
What does it take to leave a legacy in a city? Is it having your name on a building that you either built or gave a lot of money to make?
Is it knowing your entire block or neighborhood?
Is it leaving behind children and grandchildren who continue on with the family cause or business?
These are questions I’ve been thinking about lately. I’m not going to go into any more details about what brought me to these questions, because there’s a lot I cannot say about why and what happened. However, the root of it all starts here, as I detailed in my About section and in my 2010 [now unlisted] Grist article “Does urbanism have to be black or white?”
It all started with a map on the floor. My dad and I would spend Saturday afternoons “driving” around with my toy NASCARs from my friendly neighborhood Hardees. As I got older, I became enamored of the small skyline of my hometown of Greensboro, N.C. So enamored that one day, while I was sick with the chicken pox, my dad went out and bought me a postcard with the skyline on it. It hangs in my room to this day.
When they widened the main road next to our house, I cried. I also was opposed to a hotel project near my current residence that threatened to upstage the downtown area. Mind you, I was only eight. I was an urbanist in the making, although I would have had no way of knowing there was a name for it.
Dad and I biked through our neighborhood on Saturday afternoons. Those bike rides took us through housing projects and 1940s era single-family homes until we made it to the main suburban artery. I loved my bike until I moved to a neighborhood where I was teased for just walking around. It’s taken me about 15 years to consider getting back on a bike. My dad still bikes; he’s always had a string of intermittently non-working cars, so he doesn’t think twice about it.
My dad doesn’t have any buildings named after him. I’ll probably have to sell his house. He struggled to walk down streets with no sidewalks. Then there was the bike. When he got tired of fighting our stroads with both of those, he put money into a car he could barely afford. Yet, he fixed up homes that weren’t built well in the first place. He mowed yards that others couldn’t maintain. He always had a song in his heart and brought music to any space. Finally, he made sure that I knew that people, all people, mattered. All these things are his legacy.
How can you leave a legacy in your city? DO YOU and do what your community needs. My dad did. It does not take money, a building with your name on it, or a stone edifice of your body to be someone who is never forgotten or to create an example.
In fact, if you create an example, that legacy lives on and it lives in the present.
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As we go into another Black History Month, I want to challenge everyone reading or consuming a version of this page, to think about your legacy. Everyone has one and you’re definitely not required to have a building, stature or some other marker this current society has deemed “legacy” to have one.
Before You Go
One of the reasons I’m able to take this month off is because of support from my new system for advertisements. Below, is one from one of the favorite platforms I’ve written from — Greater Greater Washington , which is hiring a Regional Policy Director. Is that you? The Regional Policy Director will play a lead role in shaping how GGWash’s regional policy work evolves in the coming years. Focused primarily on housing issues in Maryland, they will develop the organization’s local and state policy agenda, build and strengthen relationships with local and regional stakeholders, organize diverse people who are interested in housing issues in the region to ensure their voices are heard, and run GGWash’s regional endorsements process.
This is a full-time, salaried position with compensation from $83,000 – $93,000 per year depending on experience. Benefits include health insurance contributions, dental insurance, life insurance, transit commuter benefits, 401(k) deferral, and paid leave. GGWash is an equal opportunity employer, and encourages candidates from diverse backgrounds to apply.
Interested? Know someone who might be a good fit? Check their job post here and apply by Friday, February 18th.
Also, I found out one of my other prior organizations, BikeWalkKC, needs a community organizer who will focus on the Historic Northeast and East sides of Kansas City on the Missouri side, who relies on transit,biking and/or walking. Learn more and apply.
Want to advertise your job, RFP, conference, achievement or something else? Let’s talk. Rates start at $75 a week for a four-week commitment, but there are one, two, three week options available, plus opportunities to extend. Learn more about our new advertising program.
And if you want to get help with resumes, cover letters or make plans to change jobs, start a business, relocate, or all of the above, especially if we share the intersections of being Black, Queer and (US) Southern, let’s talk. I’ll talk to you for an hour and review one resume and cover letter for $150USD. Additional sessions are $75/session. Send me a note if you’re interested and we can get you on schedule!
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Finally,
