As we continue to highlight women leaders of color in mental health and peer movements, we are happy to share our next leader featured in the Black Movement History Leaders exhibit: Former Director of the Howie the Harp Peer Advocacy Center and NYAPRS Cultural Competence Committee member, LaVerne Miller. See below for more information about LaVerne and her work, as well as how you can see more from the exhibit and nominate leaders in from your community!
NYAPRS’ Cultural Competence Committee is happy to share a wonderful project from the Wildflower Alliance highlighting often overlooked leaders within various mental health movements. The Black Movement History Leaders: Past & Present exhibit is both a way to publicly recognize these leaders’ great work as well as a call to develop and lift more emerging leaders of color. In the spirit of Women’s history month, we plan to use the remaining days in March to highlight women of color who have been trailblazers in overlapping movements. For more on the Black Movement History Leaders exhibit and how you can nominate leaders from your community, see below!
Black Movement History Leaders: Past & Present (wildfloweralliance.org)
There have been and continue to be many powerful Black leaders within this movement who too often are made less visible by a society that still finds it easier and more automatic to lift up white voices first. This exhibit is intended as only one of many small steps to counter that trend, and to help us avoid losing more stories from our history than have already been lost. We consider this not just an exhibit, but a call to action to lift up more black voices, to at least sometimes take a step back to make space for those who’ve had less access to these platforms, to share or pass along invitations to step forward, and to make intentional efforts to mentor and grow emerging Black voices, too. Sera Davidow, Executive Director for Wildflower Alliance tells more about her experience with this project in this Mad In American blog post .