Though decades have passed since Tanisha Driver-Bender last stepped foot in Maya Angelou Elementary in Harvey, when the 37-year-old returned Wednesday to donate a display for Black History Month, she was greeted as if she had never left.
Driver-Bender and her sister, Velvet Driver, fielded hugs from veteran special education teacher Karen Moore and Assistant Principal Joi Lewis as soon as they walked through the nondescript main entrance.
The sisters reached out to Moore and Lewis about the donation idea in hopes of helping a school that provided them a foundation of tight-knit community and cultural pride.
“They made me proud to be Black,” Driver-Bender said about the students and faculty she met at Maya Angelou. “We had Black teachers. We studied Black history — the Black history program was the most important thing to us.”
That program, which will be at a dedicated school assembly Feb. 26, will include Driver-Bender’s display as well as student cultural performances. Parents and school community members will be invited.
Driver-Bender runs an events company, and she designed all the Black history materials as well as put together the display. She was able to print the large signs at her brother’s print shop in South Holland, Supreme Merch Printing.
Display materials were unloaded and carried Wednesday through the first floor of Maya Angelou to the school’s largely vacant library, where the siblings started setting up the signs to be on view for the elementary school’s more than 200 students all month.
One of the signs Driver-Bender designed includes blurbs of information on such significant historical figures as James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Barack Obama. The other informational sign was dedicated to educating students on their school’s namesake, poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.
Driver-Bender came up with the idea to create a display for Angelou a year after being asked to create Black history art at the school her children attend in Kankakee. From there, she said she continued to create more and more art that spread throughout the entire school.
After a recent change in her district’s administration she saw the opportunity to help out her old elementary school this year.
“They have just been so supportive and thankful, and I could not be more happy,” Driver-Bender said in the school library, surrounded by various staff members. “I am so full right now.”
As Driver-Bender explained her vision of the display’s positioning in the library, she was already thinking of what more she could do next year. She said while Black History Month doesn’t seem to be as widely celebrated now as it was when she was a child, considering other occasions to celebrate Black culture and pride like Juneteenth, the time holds a special place in her heart she wants children to experience.
“I honestly believe that if you instill it when they’re small, they won’t forget it — that’s kind of how it was with us,” Driver-Bender said, gesturing toward her sister. “It’s important to keep it going.”
ostevens@chicagotribune.com
