The Sun Always Shines in Brooklyn

Photos and Writing by Henry Danner
Originally published May 6, 2022 as Columbia Journalism School Master’s Project

It’s an unseasonably warm and sunny day in April at Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Plaza. Small children dressed in all black with Kente cloth fabric head ties and waistbands shout “Hello Africa,” while dancing to the sounds of a djembe, a skin-covered goblet-shaped West African drum. The children’s faces are filled with joy as they dance and sing just a few hundred yards away from one of the most sought-after schools in Brooklyn. These three year olds are a privileged group. They are Little Sun People.

What is it that makes scores of, primarily Black, parents so eager to get their children into Little Sun People? For starters, enrichment activities such as African dance and drumming, martial arts, gardening, Swahili language lessons and chess are daily occurrences at the school in addition to academic lessons about African culture, Black American history, science, math and literacy. The walls of the classrooms are filled with African art layered upon Ankara fabric and each class at Little Sun People is named after significant African groups or places. All it takes is ten minutes inside of LSP to see how it elevates African culture and transmits its African-centered values onto its students. It takes even less time when speaking with staff and parents to understand just how important the institution has been to the community better known as “Bed-Stuy.” “By having a majority Black school, it becomes one of the only safe spaces, outside of, maybe, family, where you get to reinforce loving yourself,” says Kamau Wright, a parent of a current LSP student. “And that is key.”

Now, after 42 years, Little Sun People is embarking on a bold new chapter. Next month, the school will move out of Bed-Stuy to a much larger space in Clinton Hill.

The move would immediately allow the school to increase its enrollment for the 2022-2023 school year from 56 to 75 students in its day school program and add 50 slots for its after-school program. In 2023, the school will add its first kindergarten class. Ultimately, LSP hopes to continue to raise enough capital to pay for building renovations and hire more staff to allow for an expansion up to middle school.

In addition to increasing enrollment, Barclift will be using funds from the David Prize, which she was awarded last fall, to support the codification of Little Sun People’s curriculum so that it can be used in other preschools and early childhood education programs. Combined, these moves will contribute to the institutional growth of the school but they will also advance LSP’s position in the decades long battle for community control of the education of Black children in Central Brooklyn.

A Historic Battle

Race and education experts tend to frame the debate over education in America as a difference in vision and purpose. According to Dr. Sonya Douglass, a professor at Teachers College and the director of the Black Education Research Collective, for Black people specifically, education has historically had a unique objective. “There's a very different aim of education for Black people. It's liberation. It's emancipation...The narrative, and really, the power of Black education is its link to freedom.”

The freedom struggle that Douglass references is evident in a series of events between 1967 and 1970 that ultimately played a major role in the creation of Little Sun People. Amidst a wave of contentious debates across New York City between community members, education leaders and the teachers’ union over who should have the power to influence how neighborhood schools were run, a movement known as “community control” began to take shape.

The community control battles were most intense in Central Brooklyn where a social studies teacher at Junior High School 271 named Leslie Brown became a key figure. Brown co-founded an alternative union, the African American Teachers Association, and would go on to start The East, a pan-African cultural institution. Brown eventually adopted a Swahili name — Jitu Weusi —and rose to prominence in his community. One of the many projects launched by The East was its school the Uhuru Sasa Schule — the Freedom Now School — a private K-12 school that taught from a pan-Africanist and Afrocentric perspective. One of the first teachers hired by Weusi was Fela Barclift, founder of Little Sun People and former member of The East.

We Are Little Sun People

Barclift started LSP so her daughter Aaliyah would have a place to go at a time when daycare options were limited. More importantly, she wanted her daughter to be in a school that espoused the same values as Uhuru Sasa. Barclift’s plan was to run her day care long enough to get Aaliyah into one of the several African-centered schools at the time that offered preschool and kindergarten education, but what she ended up doing was creating a family-run business that has educated generations of children while building a tight-knit community that’s committed to excellence.

Aaliyah Barclift grew up to follow in her mother's footsteps by becoming a teacher at LSP. She’s taught there for 22 years. And although she didn't intend to teach at the school for so long, she says she found her life’s calling while serving as the lead teacher for the Zulu Fouriors — Little Sun People’s four-year-old class. “I enjoy seeing [the children] grow and develop, get smarter and stronger and more self-assured, she says. “Those things really do feed me.” Aaliyah adds that besides classroom lessons, a major factor in achieving that growth in the students is the parent-teacher partnership and the consistent engagement by LSP’s parent body. “Prior to COVID we would literally have to kick families out of the school because they will just come and hang out and talk. They just felt so at home, which is a beautiful thing,” she says. Although COVID-19 regulations have altered the physical presence of parents at the school, they still find ways to keep their levels of engagement high. This includes cheering for their children during Zoom live-streams of events that used to happen in-person, chatting with teachers daily in GroupMe group chats, and their Parent Action Committee hosting events for the parents to socialize with each other.

The African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” is noticeable in every nook and cranny of LSP. Ayoka Wise, a teacher and former student, prides herself on teaching in a way that makes an impact on her students’ lives outside of the classroom. “Every day when we do circle time, there's a lesson that I want them to get. I repeat myself a lot. So, the examples that I give, when they hear me repeating it, by the end of the day, they repeat it. And then they go home and they explain it to their parents.” That is exactly what one of her students, Nkosi Wright, did when he boarded a bus with his father Kamau Wright in March and explained to him the story of Rosa Parks after learning it in school.

The curriculum is just one piece of the Little Sun People ethos. The school has created a community that each member feels a duty to uphold. When educator turned full-time artist Omari Maynard’s partner Shamony Gibson passed away due to pulmonary embolism in the fall of 2019, just two weeks after giving birth to their youngest of two children, the LSP community wrapped their arms around him and his family. They checked on him regularly and donated clothes and gift cards. Isaiah Frazier was one person from the community who formed a strong bond with Maynard during that difficult time. Frazier, whose daughter Nala is a student in Little Sun People’s Ife Threes class, says that his ability to provide support for Maynard was largely due to how Little Sun People encourages collective work and responsibility. “I think there's this underlying cultural cohesion to a vision larger than ourselves. We know that we’re nation building,” Frazier says.

This community building mindset sticks with LSP students long after they leave the school. Sauda Anderson, a New York City Department of Education administrator and one of LSP’s first students , highlights the importance of giving back to the school community. “Showing up is the first step. If someone needs you, you show up. Then you find out from them what it is that you can give. And if you can provide that, you do, if not, you lead them to the next person because as a community, we all have something to give,” she says. The result of this mindset: a vast network of individuals of all ages bound together by a strong sense of cultural identity.

Esayah Edgehill, a LSP graduate, entered his freshman year at Stuyvesant High School last fall with a chip on his shoulder. Although the latest New York State Education Department data states that only one percent of Stuyvesant’s students identify as Black or African American, Edgehill was not deterred from enrolling. “Even though I might be one of the minorities at Stuyvesant, I still feel like I can do my best and smile and be proud because I've got a whole base of people who are proud of me and supporting me just for being who I am,” he says. “You’re never really one of the few if you have many behind you.” Silhe Smith, another former LSP student who attends a predominantly non-Black school, says that being grounded in her identity and Black history makes her feel more comfortable being herself. Edgehill and Smith, both attend academically rigorous schools and seem comfortable in their skin. And just like Little Sun People, their future looks promising.

The Sun Will Rise

The data on Afrocentric education is a bit scattered and confusing. In Central Brooklyn, the demand is high but this may reflect the interests of a niche group of parents as opposed to a citywide trend, according to Takiema Bunche Smith, founder and president of Anahsa LLC, a consulting agency that works on issues related to education and race. What she has seen is an increase in interest related to racial identity. “I see the seed has been planted with the racial justice protests of 2020 and the murder of George Floyd,” Bunche Smith says. “That created an awakening in people of their racial identity...It shifted people into different racial consciousness.” She adds that city and statewide, the focus has more so been on implementing a New York City Department of Education policy framework called Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education, which Afrocentric education technically falls under, but is placed more on the far end of the spectrum. Bunche Smith is working with LSP to compile Barclift’s 40-plus years worth of experience as an educator into a curriculum guidebook for people who are educating and raising Black children. She says the book won’t go the typical route of being validated and backed by scientific research, which she describes as “Eurocentric” and “westernized” terms that serve as tools for white supremacy. “It is centering Black children, families, community and culture. And we don't have to answer to anything. We already know that it works. We believe in it, so we want to document it and give it to people who want to expand the work.”

Taking the school from a pre-K program serving 56 students to what one day might be a full-fledged middle school is an ambitious and daunting task. For Barclift and her Board Chair Kara Benton Smith, who is tasked with leading its fundraising efforts, that means keeping the bigger goal in mind while realizing that change takes time and resources. Currently, LSP is funded through tuition, private contributions and support from the New York City Department of Education. According to Benton Smith, LSP can no longer make the same type of fiscal decisions that they have in the past. “We used to be able to barter. ‘Well, if you give me this, I'll give you that,’ and there wasn't always a monetary exchange,” she says. “There's value in that, but not when it comes to sustaining a school.

Meanwhile, Barclift, 72, continues to watch her lifelong dream come to fruition. She’s a long way from LSP’s humble beginnings in the first floor of her Bed-Stuy brownstone. Although she's moving the school out of the neighborhood, the new space is sure to maintain an essence of the rich cultural history she was a part of in Bed-Stuy. And as the LSP expansion continues to progress daily, she is cautiously optimistic yet just as confident as the many children she has taught.

“I think the right time is now. I mean, we'll see, because the tide with these folks turns constantly,” Barclift says. “But I think that we’re in a good position. We’ve proved ourselves enough.”