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Here's how, over 30 years, Nehemiah grew to shape thousands of lives in Madison

Wisconsin State Journal - 11/20/2022

Nov. 20—More than 30 years ago, the Rev. Alex Gee had a proposal for his friends, a group of young, Black recent and soon-to-be graduates of UW-Madison, as they each looked ahead to their respective futures.

Gee asked them to stay. He argued that they could forge a space for themselves and Black residents in Madison.

"I had this vision of creating something that could make Madison an exciting place for young Black professionals to hang out," Gee recalled. "What I was noticing in Madison is that the Black population was growing, but the Black people were not at the table shaping what we needed in order to feel at home."

Gee's challenge to his friends morphed into what is now the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development, an expansive nonprofit dedicated to responding to the needs of Madison's Black community.

Nehemiah, led by a staff of 23 and supported largely through community donations, services and grants, provides youth education and leadership, re-entry support and services for the formerly incarcerated, Black history education for non-Black allies, and cross-cultural leadership development.

The organization has touched thousands of lives and spotlighted the need for Black leadership in Madison, organizers said. As Nehemiah celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, Gee, the organization's president and founder, can't help but feel sentimental about its origins. Many of the friends Gee asked to stay over three decades ago remain connected to Nehemiah and still live in Madison.

"With that motley crew, we have buried parents together, we have lost babies together, we have sent kids off to college together, and we have gone on to be tremendous influencers in this community," Gee said. "It's really the vision of Nehemiah that kept this group of talented Black people in Madison."

Before Nehemiah was officially established in 1992, Gee and his friends started an after-school book club. The program was warmly received by parents, but Gee knew that there was more to be done. After a recommendation from a community investment officer to establish a nonprofit, Nehemiah was born. Its name was inspired by a series that Gee, who is also the senior pastor at Fountain of Life Covenant Church, had preached on the Book of Nehemiah from the Bible.

"It was a story of rebuilding the city wall around the temple, but it involved the people who lived in the community and the rebuilding of the community," Gee said of the book. "I just said, 'I want to see Black people rebuild South Madison.'"

Mission evolves

Across three decades, Nehemiah has evolved to meet the changing needs of Madison's Black community.

"What we've always done is that we've listened to the community, listened to the trends and we've listened to participants in our programs," he said. "The growth of Nehemiah has come not because people fit into our programs, but because our programs grew to expand with pressing community needs."

While Nehemiah's initial focus was on youth programming through its longstanding Academic Center for Excellence (ACE), a faith-based leadership development program for kindergarten through fifth-grade students, leaders noticed the importance of parental involvement, Gee said.

"We started working with the entire family. Children would be in our mentoring and leadership development programs. Parents would be in parental empowerment, and in some cases, family therapy programs," Gee said. Youth programming at Nehemiah eventually expanded to include Nefertiti, a support group for young Black girls focused on fostering self-love and confidence, along with a youth employment program.

David Bridges went through Nehemiah's youth employment program, where he received job and interview training. Bridges, who has worked as a firefighter in Madison for more than 21 years, describes his time at Nehemiah as a crucial period that set him up for success later in life.

"It really does stick with you," Bridges said. "I feel like if we didn't have that training at that time and age, it would be difficult for us to be where we are today."

After prison

As Nehemiah continued to listen, in the early 2000s it made a critical shift toward re-entry programming for people who had been recently released from prison. Around that time, Gee was working on a dissertation on fatherlessness in the Black community, leading him to learn more about the impact of mass incarceration on Black Americans.

"I just sort of stumbled into re-entry work," Gee recalled. "I was fortunate enough to have colleagues who explained what re-entry really was. It wasn't visiting prisons. It wasn't just giving people clothing when they got out. It was support. It was mentoring. It was housing."

Gee soon founded a support group for formerly incarcerated men called Man Up. Over the past decade, Nehemiah has placed 1,500 formerly incarcerated people in jobs, and some former Man Up participants have become policy and social justice leaders across the state, Gee said. Additionally, Nehemiah has provided 30-day emergency housing to roughly 1,800 formerly incarcerated individuals and placed 300 in rental housing.

"Nehemiah creates space where your background doesn't limit you. But if you're really serious about change, it can catapult you," he said. "These men are lecturing at the law school. They're working with executives at the UW hospital. They're meeting with presidential candidates. They're shaping the national agenda."

Jerome Dillard, a former Man Up participant, is now executive director and co-founder of EXPO (Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing) and has served on multiple state advisory committees, including the Wisconsin Joint Legislative Committee Council on Reducing Recidivism and Removing Impediments to Ex-Offender Employment.

After being released from prison in 2010, Aaron Hicks was a participant in Man Up. Today he is Nehemiah's re-entry coordinator and leads weekly Man Up meetings.

"It has given a multitude of men space to talk about some of their hurts and hangups," Hicks said. "We understand that about 90% to 95% of people who go to prison will get back out. So it's not about really getting out. It's about sustainability. How do we stay out?"

A vital pivot

In 2013, Gee penned an emotional column, called Justified Anger, in The Capital Times about his experiences of being racially profiled and his frustrations with the stark disparities between Madison's white and Black residents. A Justified Anger town hall that Gee hosted attracted more than 600 attendees. It was a critical moment for Nehemiah.

"After 20 years of Nehemiah focusing on strengthening the Black community, we made a pivot to talk to the non-Black folks," Gee said. "We called them 'would-be allies.' We didn't want to hand out the title ally too cheaply."

That pivot led to the formation of programs and initiatives geared toward non-Black residents, such as a nine-week "Black History for a New Day" course that Nehemiah developed with UW-Madison professor Steve Kantrowitz. The course educates people about Black history with an emphasis on justice. Since 2016, more than 4,300 people have enrolled.

Another initiative that came out of Justified Anger was a court observers program, where volunteers observe and gather data on local court cases. Through observation, participants learn about the inequities in the justice system in real time. Since the program's inception, more than 3,000 court hearings have been observed.

In addition to sharing their observations with elected officials, court observers successfully advocated for reducing the number of inmates who appeared for hearings via Zoom through the food slots in their cell doors and facilitated discussions on mental health services in prison.

"People want to say, 'Oh you've been helping to save young Black lives,'" Gee said. "No. We also saved some middle-aged white lives, because they didn't know that they had the ability to be changed by what they witnessed."

Next generation

"It just really made me feel good about being a Black girl," Shameka Harper said of her time in Nehemiah's ACE program. "Growing up in (the Madison School District), 99.9% of my teachers and people that were around me didn't look like me. But when I went to ACE, I had teachers and mentors that looked just like me."

Harper is one of more than 2,500 Madison youths who have participated in Nehemiah's programming. After serving the city's youths for decades, Nehemiah has watched as they become the next generation of Black leaders in Madison.

"One of the things for me that always stood out to me was just their ability to try and give us what we ask for," said Jamaal Eubanks, another former participant of ACE. "I remember Alex praying for me to be tall because I wanted to be short. There's clearly power in prayer because I managed to make it to 6-foot-3."

Both Harper and Eubanks said their time in Nehemiah encouraged them to give back. Harper is currently the director of administration at Nehemiah, and Eubanks is the founder of Eubanks Solutions, which hosts workshops and provides one-on-one mentoring related to leadership, resilience and self-advocacy.

"Me and Reverend Gee will connect to this day," Eubanks said. "In return, I have paid it forward and done some things in the community to give back. Whether it be creating opportunities for the less fortunate to play sports or doing back-to-school events to help kids get new shoes."

As Gee looks ahead to Nehemiah's next 30 years of service, his focus is on expansion and longevity. The organization plans to increase programming related to Justified Anger and its work with allies.

"Educational programs have been about training our white allies and our non-Black allies because if you just talk to allies and not the Black community, then you're lopsided," Gee said. "If you talk to Black folks about strengthening them, but not building up the folks who are going to do the hiring and sit on the boards, then we clash."

An emerging initiative that Nehemiah will be launching in 2023 is the Nehemiah Legacy Endowment fund, which will give supporters the opportunity to expand the ways they contribute to the organization.

"We've really got to plan for the future," Gee said. "This is an opportunity for our donors in the community to do estate planning with us or to help them to think about Nehemiah in their will."

Gee announced the launch of the legacy fund and recognized Nehemiah's 30 years of impact during a celebration at Monona Terrace this month. There, Gee reflected on the organization's humble beginnings that started with a group of 20-something Black Madisonians and a plea to stay.

"Good evening, beautiful people. We made it, and they say it couldn't last," he said. "We dreamed out loud, and no one woke us up."

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(c)2022 The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.)

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