“Between Harvard and St Louis” by Che Applewhaite for Harvard Magazine (May-June 2021)
“I wrote many diary entries that summer. “I’ve never been so anxious to write yet been at such a loss for words,” begins another. Some entries ran seven pages long. I jotted trends, one on how I could better collaborate with others: “I leave my thoughts in my head…even when I should make them heard.” […]
“I didn’t just write these things down; I shared them with my fellow undergraduates and our program coordinator, Robin McDowell, a Ph.D. candidate in African and African American Studies, every week at our debrief meetings. An idea of Robin’s, they allowed us to grapple with the question foundational to the Mindich Program’s [Program in Community-Engaged Research] collaboration with The Commonwealth Project, led by St. Louis-based rapper and revolutionary Tef Poe and Walter Johnson, Winthrop professor of history and professor of African and African American studies at Harvard—a Missouri native: “What could Harvard do that would be useful in St Louis?”
“Our team—Catie Barr ’20, Saul Glist ’22, Kale Catchings ’23, and I—was the first group of Harvard undergraduates tasked with a multi-pronged effort at making knowledge mutual: to assist front-line practitioners tackling racial capitalism in the city with our skills while we learned from their know-how.”