Culture & Education Conference

Participants will gain a better understanding of how exclusionary and harsh discipline policies and practices fuel the preschool to prison pipeline and their impact on students' opportunities for learning and succeeding. The targeted number of conference participants is 150-200. We hope you can join us! 

Confirmed speakers are child advocate, historian, and award-winning author of “Why Whupping Black Children Won’t Save America”, Dr. Stacey Payton, Dr. James Bernard Pratt, Jr, Professor & Researcher, at Fisk University and co-author of “Historic Lynching and Corporal Punishment in Contemporary Public Schools in the South” and advocate for human rights and violence reduction.   Added to this dynamic list of presenters is Dr. Marvin Haire, founder & creator of the Gourd of Wisdom Institute and recognized curriculum design specialist.  Dr. Haire, along with former youth organizers from Nollie Jenkins Family Center will discuss and demonstrate NJFC’s Scholars of Peace:  From Mali to Mississippi, a peer mediation and cultural restorative justice project from both a scholarly and participatory action research (PAR) perspective.

The third and final day of the Convening sponsored and hosted by the Wayfinder Foundation and Racial Justice NOW will culminate in the Mississippi “White Paper Launch” Dismantling the Pre-School to Prison Pipeline Through Black Literacy and Education for Transformation”, a study prepared by Chike Akua, Ph. D for the Wayfinder Foundation and Racial Justice NOW.  Saturday’s renowned guest and main presenter is Dr. Chike Akua, an assistant professor of Educational Leadership at Clark Atlanta University. The “White Paper” examines the relationship between the pre-school to prison pipeline and the need for increased and effective Black literacy and education.