I am the Program Director of the Center for Teen Empowerment. My Master’s history thesis at SUNY College at Brockport focuses on the history of structural racism in Rochester’s housing, employment, and educational systems. At every opportunity, I advocate for Youth Voice in policy and systems change and creation in the community and within education. Since 2019, I have been co-facilitating this project focused on the history of Clarissa Street in the city of Rochester which was a part of one of the only two wards where African American people were allowed to live. The project interviewed Elders and activists from across the community which was eventually turned into the award-winning documentary entitled Clarissa Uprooted: Youth and Elders Uncover the Story of Black Rochester.
As Exhibit Project Manager for Clarissa Uprooted, I have the pleasure of working in close collaboration with amazing elders, youth, community partners and exhibition experts. From 1952 to the present, five generations of the Griffin family have resided in the Historic Third Ward, now known as the Corn Hill District. I am a K-6 English Language Arts and Social Studies teacher dedicated to educating the wider community about our once thriving African American neighborhood and the ultimate impacts of its destruction; which often is never taught. I welcome all to explore, understand and educate yourselves through the multi-dimensional elements of the Clarissa Uprooted Exhibition!
I am honored to be one of the proud Elders working with the dynamic Teen Empowerment to bring to light the devastation experienced by the gentrification of Clarissa St. – 3rd Ward. My family heritage in Rochester dates back to the early 1800’s. I am proud to have lived, worshipped, attended school, worked, and enjoyed time with our neighbors in the 3rd Ward. My heart now fills with great sadness and pain because my hopes and dreams for our future was taken away from us! I worked at Kodak for over 33 yrs. as a supervisor and then manager in Employee Benefits and International Impatriate Relocation Services. After retiring from Kodak, I joined Nothnagle REALTORS, which is now Howard Hanna Real Estate Services. I am a member of the Women’s Council of REALTORS and previously served as the President of the Rochester Network and Governor for New York State. Over the years, I have volunteered and served on many committees to help our community. I am a board member of the Rochester Education Foundation, an independent, not-for-profit organization, that believes every child deserves a great education.
I am very happy to be a part of Teen Empowerment’s Intergenerational History Ambassadors team. My grandparents, Alpheus and Eunice Vallot came to Rochester in the early 1940’s from New Iberia, Louisiana. They were early entrepreneurs. Upon their arrival, they opened up a grocery store on Clarissa St. and next bought property at 439 Clarissa St. that would become Vallot’s Rendezvous (later Vallot’s Tavern). My parents were married in Louisiana and moved to Rochester in 1946, the year I was born. They opened a grocery store on the corner of Ford and Troup St. in the 1950’s. Our family businesses, along with our house on Favor St., remained until Urban Renewal came about—when all of our neighbors were also forced to sell off our properties for minimal amounts so they could be torn down. In between, I graduated from Immaculate Conception Grammar School and Madison High School. I then enrolled in an apprenticeship program and became a certified machinist. My first real job was a Screw Machine Operator at the Advance Screw Products off of Brooks Ave. In 1966, I was drafted into the US Army, including a tour in Vietnam. I started a career at The Eastman Kodak Company where I was employed for 33 years, retiring in 2002. Today I drive part-time for Medical Motor Service. I have been married to my wife Myrtle for 45 years and have three adult children. I’m active at my church, The Immaculate Conception, where I serve on the Parish Council. I also am a member of VFW Post 9251. I have been a member of the Clarissa St. Reunion Committee for ten years.
I became a Teen Empowerment Youth History Ambassador at 14 years old, during the summer of 2019. I graduated in 2022 from Pittsford Sutherland High School. I encouraged my peers to express themselves and pursue their talents through Diversity Club, football and track at my school. I was also a facilitator and presenter at Roc2Change informing students about racist policies and structural racism in Rochester. In 2021, I led a student walkout in response to a pattern of incidents in which Pittsford District leadership tolerated overtly racist actions and curriculum in our schools. I now attend Finger Lakes Community College on a 2+2 track before transferring to a 4-year college. I’ve been a beatboxer for over two years and was featured in Clarissa Uprooted, the documentary. I’ve presented about our project at multiple conferences, talkbacks and radio talk shows. To support our exhibit, I was promoted to Associate Education & Marketing Specialist, where I facilitated dozens of group visits by businesses, community and faith groups, public officials, educators, and youth.
I have been connected to the Clarissa St. project as a Youth History Ambassador since 2019 when I was 14 years old and my poem is featured in the Clarissa Uprooted documentary. Before that I served as a Teen Empowerment Youth Organizer with a team of other youth working to uplift our community through relationship-building, the arts, and social change. I traveled to Albany and Yonkers to meet with state legislators to advocate and win increases in funding for our schools in Rochester. Through TE, I became a representative member of the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council called Youth Voice One Vision (YVOV), where I completed a project management course. Since then, I have become Vice President of YVOV. I graduated in June 2022 as a vocal major at School of the Arts in Rochester, NY. I am now pursuing my degree in youth development at Nazareth College. I have a certificate of achievement in the Close-up program. Through all of my work, I have spoken and/or performed in front of thousands of community members and leaders, received multiple awards and have appeared on multiple news platforms about my work. My work on Clarissa Uprooted has taught me and in turn, helped me teach others: “If you don’t know history, then you are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”
Becoming a Youth History Ambassador and working for Teen Empowerment in general has brought a one of a kind energy to my life. All my life I’ve heard knowledge is power and if anything taught me that was true it’s TE. Learning what happened in Rochester years ago revealed that history is repeating itself today because the same things that tore apart communities back then are creating even bigger wounds today. Clarissa Uprooted has taught me the importance of educating everyone and I have done that through poetry, public speaking, and even teach-in’s on the very places historic events took place. I also participate in the Teaching & Learning Institute (TLI) career pathway. I am currently a junior at East High School where in 2019 I helped lead a walkout when the school district cut teachers in the middle of the year. I also led a Black Students Matter march that appears in the Clarissa Uprooted documentary. I plan to always stay involved with this work. Clarissa Uprooted has gotten me so many opportunities and in return I bring my best self with my young mind to contribute all that I can to this intergenerational movement.
My twin, Tashiana, and I began working as TE youth history ambassadors at 14 years old in 2019. We continued working during the pandemic shutdown remotely over Zoom in partnership with the Clarissa St Reunion Committee elders. It was a lifeline for all of us during that isolating time. When I witnessed our city reliving almost the exact history we’d been learning during the uprisings in 2020, I had to get involved. I wanted us to learn from the past and do better. I marched, got injured when police attacked peaceful protestors, and joined in All Black Lives Matter activism supporting LGBTQ people as well. In 2021, I became the youngest student to win the Princeton Prize on Race Relations in our region for my work on Clarissa Uprooted. I’ve appeared in the D&C featuring local youth activists and my poetry was featured in the video played at the Landmark Society’s Five to Revive press conference. I also helped submit our documentary to film festivals, so I was extra excited to walk the red carpet in NYC for one of our four national awards in 2021. I always say that Clarissa Uprooted and TE made me the person I am today. I graduated from School of the Arts in 2022 and now am studying at Louisiana State University!
I am Teen Empowerment’s Collaborations Manager. When I started working at TE in Boston in 2001, I had the amazing opportunity to partner with Karilyn Crockett’s team at MYTOWN and experienced for the first time the power of youth sharing knowledge (in that case, through neighborhood walking tours) that they learned from oral histories with elders. When I moved home to Rochester, I could not have imagined how parallel and catalytic intergenerational storytelling would become for growing understanding, will, and action toward repairing the harm of profound inequities, segregation and mythologies that affect youth today between our city and suburbs. I have served as a co-lead coordinating the variety of collaborations to keep up Clarissa Uprooted’s multifaceted momentum. I hold a Ph.D. in Social Science and M.A. in Education from Syracuse University, and NYS teacher certification in secondary social studies. In the 1990s, I taught photography to Madison Middle School students and facilitated exchanges with Guatemalan youth who lived in the returned refugee community where I had served as a human rights accompanier. Through my two decades at TE, I have coordinated youth-adult partnerships for systems change, including the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council (2007-10) and the ongoing Solutions Not Suspensions and Community Task Force on School Climate effort in the Rochester City School District. My time with Clarissa Uprooted has been the honor of my life.
I joined TE as an Intergenerational History Ambassador because it’s essential to me that people who tell our stories have skin in the game. I grew up in the 3rd Ward “village” in various locations on and around Clarissa Street, attending both #3 School and Immaculate Conception. Then on to St. Agnes High School for a year before taking off to Japan with my Mom and Stepdad. I returned home two years later to graduate from St. Agnes in 1958. Soon after, I married and was happy to raise my children in the “village,” living on Greig Street and Plymouth Avenue until gentrification took over. Although I was the first Black woman to work in the office at Haloid Xerox in 1962, in my heart I was an entrepreneur. While I had started a couple of small businesses initially, my biggest business was on Jefferson Avenue. I founded Uhuru (Swahili for Freedom), an African clothes, fabrics and artifacts store which went on to become the first Black gift shop in Midtown Plaza. The mission of my elder years has been to secure the legacy of my father as the trustee of the Howard W. Coles’ Collection at Rochester Museum and Science Center (RMSC). He was a prominent figure in the African American community in Rochester and beyond. Among many accomplishments, he founded and published the Frederick Douglass Voice newspaper (aka the Rochester Voice) from 1933-1996, where I worked as editor for its last six years. He was also a realtor, housing researcher, jobs advocate and worked on behalf of migrant laborers. He and my mother, Alma Kelso Coles Greene, were the first Black radio broadcasters in Rochester. My mother’s family also has deep roots in Rochester and she and I were featured in the RMSC exhibit, Changemakers: Rochester Women Who Changed the World. I am pleased to have been one of the founding members of the Clarissa Street Reunion Committee. I continue to serve on many advisory boards and committees, including for the Antiracist Curriculum convened by PathStone Foundation, the RMSC DEI Committee, and The Frederick Douglass International Airport Arts Committee. Working with the teens at TE has given me renewed energy to help them better the world they have inherited, in part by learning from what we were able to create on Clarissa Street not so long ago.
I am an 11th grade vocal major at the School of the Arts. Since 2021, I have been a Youth Organizer and a Youth History Ambassador with Teen Empowerment. The work that I do carries so much importance and means so much to a lot of people. I’m able to tell a story and bring back so many memories that were so significant to not only people but to the Rochester community as a whole. For example, I helped put together Clarissa Uprooted: The Exhibit. Specifically, I worked on the Charles Price Virtual Reality Streetscape and on the Black-owned Businesses sections of the exhibit that brings Clarissa St. back to life in a creative and honest way. This was the most inspiring part of the project to me to see how much my people had built for themselves and their European immigrant neighbors. As well, I loved talking with Ms. Jeannie Hymes Harris, who I wrote a poem about. (They knocked down her house, which also included Underground Railroad tunnels in the basement!?!)