Spirit Tawfiq, Antiracism Educator & Storyteller
By Zia Tollette
My creativity and imagination was sparked by growing up outdoors. I’m from Ontario, Canada and my parents raised their 6 children on a farm. So I grew up completely immersed in nature. As a young person I had this vibrant, beautiful imagination and a limitless outlook on the world and then it was completely stifled, as if someone had put out a flame, when I went to school and was discriminated [against] because I was black. My brothers and sisters and I were the only children of color in the whole school.
My mother almost never talked about being one of the Little Rock Nine, but she modeled activism and womanhood for me. From a very early age, we were involved in protests. I was arrested when I was in the fifth grade, my little sister in the third grade. We went to “Free Mandela” demonstrations. My mother, sister, and I were arrested protesting the logging of an old-growth forest, and so on. My mother went back to school to get her undergraduate and social degree in Native Human Services, and then we started to work more with the local Ojibwe community. They have a matrilineal society, and I feel as though my mother was able to be herself in that setting and in that environment. Among her friends and the community there, we were welcomed in and I saw my mother like I had never seen her before. I think that at that moment in time I saw my mother as a fully realized human being, on her own, at an earlier age than the average person because she had to exude such strength and determination to get herself back on her feet.
Minnijean Brown Trickey (center) in 1957 at the U.S. courthouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, and (inset) with daughter Spirit Trickey. (© AP Images/Inset: Spirit Trickey)
Recently my husband asked me, “Suppose you weren’t doing the work that you are, continuing on the legacy of your mother, doing things with education and Civil Rights and social justice. What would you be doing?” I had to rewind and I was like, “I’ve always wanted to be a journalist.” I’ve always written, I love writing, I’ve loved writing from an early age. And as a matter of fact, even though I didn’t really know my mother’s role in history, journalism was a big part of our experience because of her story. There were always journalists who would interview my mother or there were film crews shooting a documentary about her life. I’m not quite sure where it turned for me, but I know I’ve always been drawn to stories, and I’ve always been drawn to visuals. By being immersed in journalism and storytelling and writing growing up, that’s what became exciting and attractive to me.
Right now, “Roots of the Spirit” is my podcast. Of course it's a play on words, but it’s also much broader because it's the culmination of my journey as the daughter of a Civil Rights trailblazer, my own struggle and life’s journey with racism and identity, and learning my mother’s story after almost drowning in it for ten years while working at Little Rock’s historic site. I had to come out of that and carve my own platform. I’m looking at the big picture in terms of our connection to our elders and our ancestors and our connection to the young people ahead of us; just really seeing myself in the middle of this continuum, this circle. So “Roots of the Spirit” is my way of using my life experiences and my platform to catalyze conversations around race, racism, and social justice. I honestly believe that the only way forward is to have honest conversations... reconciliation is only possible when we’re being truthful.
My umbrella is to uproot racism through storytelling, education, and arts. So in a variety of different avenues I want to be able to bring forth conversations that hit on those pillars in different ways. For example, I interviewed a young black male birder on my podcast. He’s from the Bronx and now he’s with the Audubon Society, and he leads bird walks in Central Park and in Atlanta. He interrupts the narrative by being a Black conservationist. That’s one avenue. There are artists, there are people who are strictly doing policy, I have a professor who is doing anti-racism work. So it’s, “How are you interrupting expectations and uprooting them through your particular passion and gifts?”
I was actually inspired [to start my podcast] by an amazing woman of color. I worked for the National Parks Service and the Smithsonian for 13 years. At a certain point I had this crazy idea to go out on my own and pursue my “Roots of the Spirit” platform. Originally “Roots of the Spirit” was a video series and it was too much work to get together a film crew and shoot a video. I did a few filmed episodes and then it laid dormant and I picked up podcasting because it's more “me.” I can control my schedule and all of those elements and I know how to edit, etc. I started listening to “Side Hustle Pro” and I became obsessed with it and binge watched the entire series. Somewhere along the line, Nicaila Matthews Okome, the host, announced that she was doing a podcasting moguls class. So I enrolled in it and I took a podcasting course with her and became completely connected and immersed in the women of color podcast community. I felt totally in tune with what everybody is doing. There are so many young women of color who have amazing podcasts on a vast array of topics.
Another project I did recently was 1/9th, a play based on my mother’s experiences as a member of the Little Rock Nine. I was born and raised in Canada, didn’t know about my mother’s whole story, found out about it, thought it was awesome, and was like “Ooh I want to write a book about her!” I was 17 at the time. A twist of fate sent us to the United States, to Maryland. Another twist of fate moved us to Little Rock, Arkansas. Never in a million years did I think I would live there. I spent 10 years there soaking in being around my grandmother and my aunts and being in my mother’s hometown. I got to know what she meant to the town, and I dove deep into research. It was a very tumultuous journey full of joy and challenges. I had started university in Canada and then when I got to Little Rock I decided that I needed to go back and finish my degree. So I went to The University of Arkansas at Little Rock and I wrote a draft of a play for one of my playwriting classes. I think I got a B, a low B, and that was that. And a few years went by and then everyone was getting excited for the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of Central in 2007. So leading up to that the Arkansas Repertory Theater, which is a regional theater, put out a playwriting competition for Black and Latinx emerging playwrights. My professor from the class where I wrote the play got in touch with me and said, “Hey, why don’t you submit your play to this contest?” So I did, with another young woman, and we won! They cast actors to do a reading at the Rep and the audience reception was so incredible that Bob Huck, who was the artistic director, literally turned to another director and said, “We need to do something bigger with this.” He worked with Arkansas Repertory Theater to take 1/9th on an educational residency and took it to 10 schools and communities across the state. It was an amazing experience, and we literally cast professional actors. I connected with Mosaic Templars years later and actually worked with Crystal Mercer as my stage manager and we brought 1/9th back to life. So at this moment I’m still working to get it published because I distribute it freely to schools and stuff, but I would love to have it on the shelf somewhere for young actors to use, or anybody, really.
Even though it was so long ago, it's very keenly etched in my heart and my mind. I was very fortunate to have the support of that regional theater, so I encourage young people who are pursuing creative endeavors to look for partnerships everywhere. I feel like these institutions are always looking for fresh content, for creative ideas, for a new perspective.
I was fortunate in that I was a public affairs specialist, and Little Rock is not all that big, so I had gained a vast network. I was always in the community and I think that turned to benefit me professionally and personally. In terms of the creative process, it's almost like a funnel where I have all these ideas, I have these resources, I have this network, and I have these skills… so what is the product? And so with 1/9th I was in Little Rock for 10 years, sitting around my Grandmother’s dining room table having conversations, working at Central High National Historic Site, visiting with people from around the world and having them reflect on what the Central High crisis meant to them, diving into research myself, meeting people who were around and experienced the crisis first hand, and being involved and instrumental in the 50th anniversary planning. I’m like, “This doesn't happen every day, I need to preserve this in some way.” So 1/9th was the child, the product that was born from all this.
Roots of the Spirit podcast logo
With Women’s Activism NYC, it started while I was building the foundation for “Roots of the Spirit.” Everything is all related to this story– I worked at Central High National Historic Site for 10 years, which was the greatest blessing but it was also very heavy on my soul because I was absorbing all of that trauma. I wanted to move on and excel in the National Park Service, so I was hired at a Historic Site in Seattle which got me closer to my family in Vancouver, Canada. And when I went to Seattle I felt like I was free falling because everything that I had known for so long and so deeply was gone. I think coming to New York made me realize that I still need to be doing this work– I need to be doing social justice work, I need to be doing education work, and I need to carry this torch that my mother is handing to me. I launched “Roots of the Spirit.” I was doing my work for the podcast as usual, just like looking for podcast guests, and I came across this job posting at the Department of Records and Information Services in New York, which maintains the city’s Archives. The posting was for Women’s Activism NYC. In essence, Women’s Activism NYC is like a tapestry of stories honoring changemakers, activists, and everyday women in celebration of the Women’s suffrage centennial. So it’s like an online archive where anyone can go on and honor a woman by telling her story. It can be short, it can be long, it can be a poem. And the unique aspect is that those stories will live in the archive in perpetuity, rewriting history to include the voices of those often cast aside.
As told to Changing Womxn Collective. Interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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