Representation in the classroom for non-White students has been a historic battle in America. It’s meant generations of Black students that rarely read books in school with characters like them, only finding mention of themselves in history textbooks.  As IPR’s Ransom True reports, a program in Muncie’s Whitely neighborhood is hoping to change that for local students.

“I remember as a kid you know, reading stories, not only were there not stories in my classroom, or books with images that looked like me or truly reflected my story and my experience,” says Wilisha Scaife.  “Most of what I read, when there was a black face, it was negative or something or minimal in the story and so that just became my reality.”

Scaife has organized a project to combat this, focusing on uplifting the historically Black Whitely neighborhood in Muncie.

The project, called Literacy for Liberation, will provide students living in the neighborhood with children’s books that feature Black characters, and are written by Black authors.

Scaife says the program is both important and necessary.

“But you don’t see your own culture or your own ethnicity, elevated and valued and celebrated in spaces that we frequent. And so not having that in schools, where students are spending so much of their time is detrimental, its traumatic. We talk a lot about trauma that kids have from different places, from homes and all that, but school can be a very traumatic space and part of that is when you never have a chance to see yourself in a positive light.”

One of the primary goals of Literacy for Liberation is to heal and prevent this trauma in Black children, providing them with a mirror into their own lives and their own communities.

Literacy for Liberation’s Saturday meetings will leave students with ten new books by the end of the ten-week program.

Ransom True is a news fellow with Ball State Public Media’s Public Media Accelerator student fellowships.