2010 NAIS Diversity Leadership Award
Presented to Reveta Franklin Bowers

Reveta Franklin Bowers, the 2010 recipient of the NAIS Diversity Leadership Award has always personified optimism and confidence. As economic and social storms have buffeted independent schools, Bowers -- head of The Center for Early Education in Los Angeles since 1976 and past treasurer of the NAIS board of trustees -- has been a beacon for many. How remarkable, then, that her family history intersects with some of the most devastating social storms of the 20th century.

Bowers addressed a packed house of family, friends, and colleagues at the award ceremony, which took place at the NAIS Annual Conference in San Francisco on Thursday, February 25.

Doreen S. Oleson, head of St. Mark's School (California), looked out over the smiling crowd, which included Superior Court Judge Bob Bowers, Reveta's husband, and their children and grandchildren. Oleson remarked, "From this vantage point, it looks like a love fest." Indeed it was. It would also be a catharsis, as Bowers told a rapt audience three pivotal stories about her family.

NAIS President Patrick F. Bassett called Bowers "a formidable power in our midst," with ways of leading that "change the course of events." Gene Batiste, NAIS vice president, leadership education and diversity, explained that the award seeks to honor "women and men who have left an indelible mark on our work to maintain inclusive independent school communities." Apropos of Reveta Bowers, he quoted e.e. cummings, who wrote. "It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are."

Bowers took the podium to a standing ovation to tell us about who she really is -- an identity rooted in a remarkable American family. Saying that she learned from reading Robert Coles' book, The Call of Stories, she remarked "Stories shape the way we are, particularly those that are passed down in families."

The story Bowers told began on thelatter-day Trail of Tears in 1917, when her grandparents left the South and moved west, seeking a better life. They found it in Greenwood, Oklahoma, a suburb of Tulsa that would become the most prosperous black community in the country. Bowers' grandfather opened the first photography studio in Greenwood, and later a garage. The family -- and the neighborhood around them -- flourished.

Then it was May 31, 1921.

"My mother was so excited," Bowers said. "Her maternal grandparents were due to arrive, and it was six days before her birthday. Their trunks had arrived and were next to the piano in the parlor."

At this point in her narrative, Bowers paused to screen a section of a documentary about what happened next in Greenwood, Oklahoma. The program explained how, after World War I, the economy in white Tulsa waned -- and the Ku Klux Klan burgeoned.

On that May day, the would-be lynching of a 19-year-old black man who had been accused of assaulting a white elevator operator erupted into violence. Greenwood was stormed by a white mob and destroyed. Over 16 hours, 30 city blocks of homes, stores, and churches were burned down, and 300 black Americans were slaughtered by their own neighbors. It was the worst race riot in U.S. history -- although it would not be until 2001 that the event made it into a single history book, Bowers said. The film, prepared for congressional hearings, included interviews with 34 survivors of the Greenwood riots -- including Bowers' mother.

"Now, fast-forward," Bowers said. "The impact of that night changed my parents' lives forever."

While many people lost not only their property, but also their hopes, their dreams, and their belief in the justice system, "My grandparents lost their property, but they did not lose their belief in human beings," Bowers said.

The second story took place in California, where the Franklin family had gone to begin life over again after Greenwood. Her parents settled in Los Angeles, where her father started a wholesale grocery business and her mother went to work as a secretary, because her color prevented her from working as a teacher in the public schools. The family lived downtown, on First Street, in "an eclectic and unusual community." The Franklins befriended their next-door neighbors, a young Japanese family who ran a small grocery.

Then it was December 7, 1941.

"When Pearl Harbor happened, the community became fraught with racial tensions," Bowers said. "Japanese-Americans were gathered and sent to relocation camps in California and Arizona."

Among them were the next-door neighbors, who were sent to Manzanar War Relocation Center, one of 10 camps where 110,000 Japanese-American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were interned during World War II.

But unlike many Japanese-Americans, their assets were not seized by the government; Bowers' father had bought the grocery store for a modest sum and promised to keep it going during the family's absence. Bowers' parents ran the store, held on to their neighbors' property and money, and in 1945 returned everything intact. Taking back the sum they had paid for the business, the Franklins moved to South Central Los Angeles and built a grocery store there.

"I was a postwar baby, born in 1948," Bowers said. "I spent the first seven years of my life living the privileged life of an only child. Penny candy was easy to come by because my dad owned the local grocery store!"

Then came the Korean War.

Bowers' father's business had prospered, and the family had moved to the west side of town. But another baby had not arrived, so her parents decided to investigate adoption. Their quest led them to the plight of the mixed-race G.I. war babies left behind in Korea.

"These babies were the targets of violence," Bowers said. "President Eisenhower made it possible for American families to adopt them, and babies began to pour into California; 285 Negro-Korean babies came into the community in L.A."

Three of those children -- two boys and a girl -- ended up in the Franklin family.

"I went from being an only child to being the older sister of three younger siblings," Bowers said with a laugh. "I learned how to speak Korean so I could negotiate the playroom."

"So what does all of this have to do with diversity?" Bowers added. "We learned a lot about complicated histories."

These three family stories were told over and over and over again in her home as she grew up, surrounded by loving but strict parents and an extended network of family that included musicians and teachers, Bowers said.

"Our house was a place where adults gathered on the weekend to eat, play, practice, and compose," Bowers recalled. "They were of all races and all backgrounds. My grandmother was the neighborhood music teacher and white kids from my school came to my grandmother for lessons. I was taught to accept people for whom they are, not where they come, what they have, or the color of their skin."

But Bowers could never forget the color of her own skin, she said. "The bar was higher, and that was known -- and the bar my family held was higher still."

Although Bowers was determined never to become a teacher, she ended up as one as a stop-gap measure while her husband attended law school. Her plan was to go to law school herself once his practice was established, she said.

Then it was 1972.

That autumn, furloughed from a position in the public schools, Bowers took a job teaching kindergarten at The Center for Early Education. And the rest, as they say, is history.

"I came to love the place and the people," says Bowers, who has been at the school ever since. "There was only one black child in my class, and one Japanese child in the classroom next door. You could count the families of color on one hand. But I was working with gifted educators, and the parents were there because it was where they wanted to be. It was a system that valued diversity even though there was very little in place."

In 1976, the young teacher was invited to head the elementary school. "I refused at first," Bowers recalled. "What finally motivated me was the raise I got. I was the only head of color in the California Association of Independent Schools for many, many years."

With her CAIS colleagues, Bowers worked to advance diversity throughout California, including writing diversity questions into accreditation documents.

"If we ask them to count the kids of color and we ask them what they are doing about diversity, maybe they'll get the idea," Bowers said. "And so it began."

Today, The Center for Early Education has grown from 195 students to 538, and the student body has moved from two students of color to 45 percent students of color and 30 percent faculty and staff of color.

"Diversity is the hardest work I have ever done," said Bowers, tears in her eyes now. "What I have learned has to do with the people in this room. In accepting this I am not accepting it for myself. I accept it on behalf of the people who stood shoulder to shoulder with me." Bowers asked the colleagues who worked with her through the years to stand. "This is your award for the battles you undertook."

As the tears fell and the cheers shook the room, she urged educators to send people to NAIS's Call to Action and People of Color Conferences. She urged them to enjoy the hard work involved, to cry the tears, to have the frank conversations.

"If you don't push the diversity ball we'll never get to the place where we can kick it and sail over the finish line," she said. "The polarization of neighborhoods is increasingly challenging us to make our schools safe places for our students. We must take care to make sure that schools are safe havens for families, students, faculty, and staff. Finding the time to tell stories is paramount; tell the stories that shape our lives, our maintenance workers' lives, our children's, our teachers', and our parents' lives. Find time for the telling."

On February 25, 2010, Reveta Franklin Bowers found time for the telling. And what a gift it was.