🔒Hartford nonprofits seek key role in addressing, tackling racial disparities

Samuel Gray Jr. was stunned during a recent virtual town hall with Hartford middle-school students when he asked how many of the young people had seen the video of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

Of the 40 fifth- through eighth-graders on the Zoom call, every single one raised their hand.

“That’s profound, the impact of seeing something so devastating,” said Gray, CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Hartford.

The students went on to discuss the history of racist violence in the United States and roots of anti-black racism.

“There was an education that was happening amongst themselves organically that was rich in regards to understanding why we are where we are today as African Americans,” Gray added. He resolved to bolster his organization’s educational efforts around historical injustice.

Hartford-area nonprofits are grappling with their role in the new surge of attention to racism in the wake of Floyd’s death and the wave of social justice protest that has swept the nation.

Emails and calls have flooded into agencies that focus on issues in the African American community, nonprofit leaders say.

People are offering support and asking for help in addressing the thorny issues around bias in corporations and other institutions.

Gray — an African-American man, father of three young Black men and husband of a retired police officer — said the protests combined with the devastating impact of the COVID-19 shutdown have challenged Hartford communities, especially young people.

“I believe there’s a trauma, mental health trauma, all associated with these different factors,” Gray said. He has redirected his nonprofit’s focus on providing services that acknowledge current events and provide constructive solutions to heal the community.

Young people are asking for concrete steps to take action to improve conditions, Gray added. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Hartford plans to revise its programs to meet those needs, he said.

“It’s our responsibility as an organization that we equip our young people, we support our young people, with giving them actionable solutions to move forward to drive change that is necessary for our community,” Gray said. “We have to look at our programs to assure that they are created through a lens of diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Although donations have increased since the protests started, Gray said his organization is looking to partner with other nonprofits to offer needed programs. He has been in contact with Connecticut Children’s Medical Center CEO James Shmerling to discuss expanding and improving care for young people affected by trauma.

“Those partnerships are going to be key,” Gray said. “We are raising our hands and saying we want to partner.”

Closing racial-disparity gaps

Calls have also been coming in to the Urban League of Greater Hartford, and CEO David Hopkins has been making connections between the nonprofit’s mission and the themes of the recent protests.

“We find ourselves balancing the difference between protesting in the format that we’ve seen and recognizing that everything we do every day is also an effort to address some of these disparities,” Hopkins said. “The work that we do is our effort to address the root of the injustice that exists.”

In Hartford, the Urban League’s focus has been on economic disparities and closing the educational and employment gaps that persist in African American communities. Issues around policing have focused on the push for independent prosecutors to investigate police misconduct, in line with the national Urban League. Hartford city officials have been progressive in pushing for police reform, Hopkins said.

The COVID-19 lockdown has challenged the nonprofit to continue and augment its programs in this time of national self-examination on racism, Hopkins said.

“It’s been a constant adjustment to figure out how to run our programs virtually, understanding there’s a heightened need for the programs that we run,” he said.

Young people in the organization’s Project Ready, which prepares students for college, are struggling to complete service projects and study for finals without access to in-person resources. Other efforts like the Urban League’s first-time homebuyer, financial literacy and workforce development programs have been pushed into the virtual space even as demand has intensified.

Online donations to the Urban League — mostly in smaller amounts — have increased from an average of one a month to three or four a day, Hopkins said, although traditional fundraising events like the nonprofit’s career expo are going forward.

As part of “mindful action to support an inclusive and just world for all,” the Root Center for Advanced Recovery awarded the Hartford Urban League $20,000 this month.

“Growth can only happen by coming together, sharing our strength, and listening to our neighbors,” Root Center CEO Steven Zuckerman said in a statement. “We are proud to support the Urban League of Greater Hartford, as they work to support the community we love.”

“We think we have something to offer to the corporate community in the way of understanding the ways these levels of racial injustice have an impact,” Hopkins said, adding that several large companies had contacted him about enhancing their anti-racism training.

Both nonprofit CEOs said they hoped the present moment of national reckoning had a lasting and positive impact on both their community and organizations.

“This can’t be an initiative that happens for a couple of months,” said Gray of the Boys & Girls Clubs. “This has to be a diversity consciousness that has to be embedded in the fabric of many organizations and companies. It has to be more than that if we’re going to drive real change in our community.”

“I do feel like the conversations are far more expanded now, there are more people involved and people are thinking more broadly,” Hopkins said. He said that he and many others, however, couldn’t help but ask “Why now?”

“That’s part of the pain in many ways because there’s action happening now,” Hopkins said. “If this had happened sooner, we could have potentially avoided some of the tragedy.”

This story was done with support from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.