About Us
Essence of Black Girlhood
The Essence of Black Girlhood (EBG) is a narrative campaign showcasing multi-media art forms including a film related to the marginalization and associated harms experienced during Black girlhood. We highlight the connections of adultification bias, generational trauma, a racist mass incarceration system, and the magical resilience and strength Black girls carry into adulthood.
Our Story
Essence of Black Girlhood is a project of the Justice2Jobs Coalition. This project is funded by the Creative Corps Pilot Program of the City of Sacramento, Office of Arts and Culture with funding from the California Arts Council, a state agency.
Justice2Jobs Coalition was one of 26 regional organizations awarded The Arts, Culture, and Creative Economy Commissions’ Capital Region Creative Corps Grant, an initiative dedicated to connecting art with public health, health equity, and social justice.
The Essence of Black Girlhood project harnesses the power of authentic storytelling in three historically marginalized communities - Del Paso Heights, Oak Park, and Meadowview while incorporating the creative contributions of local Black artists focusing on lived experiences through the lens and historic spirit of Black girls.
Our mission
AMPLIFY
Amplify the artform of multi-generational storytelling through the recording of oral histories and showcasing other artforms that reflect the experiences, inspirations, and resilience of Black girls.
engage & teach
Engage the public and strengthen community awareness about the intersections of generational trauma, adultification bias, racist punitive systems and structures, and Black girl resilience and joy.
take action
Help diverse audiences understand this crisis and address it.
Background
The project emerged from the lived experience and passion from J2J’s community organizer and the project’s Co-Creative Director, Sade Ajayi. Born and raised in Sacramento, Sade grew up witnessing how power, poverty, and policy moved in the lives of marginalized communities. Seeing the disparities of her community and those alike, she grew passionate about justice, liberation, the redistribution of wealth, and building communities of belonging. Sade’s next step is law school at Howard University in Washington D.C. Sade’s Co-Creative Director, Shanalle Patterson brings her lived experience and passion to the project from both her girlhood experiences in the East Bay as well as Sacramento. Shanalle works with criminalized and system impacted Black youth in Sacramento and uses her expertise to inform the community through community organizing and through her work with the County’s Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council.
Who is J2J?
Justice2Jobs is a rising coalition of criminal legal and policy analysts and advocates pursuing racial and economic justice. We are a community power-building project that rejects punishment bureaucracy and advocates for the creation of transformative systems that advance economic opportunity. We believe in participatory justice. We catalyze Sacramento Region’s criminal legal, economic, policy and abolition communities. We use criminal records repair, holistic and participatory defense, and other restorative practices to center the experiences of those who have been directly harmed. We look at justice systemically—interrogate processes, excavate and report facts, and create solutions for healthy, equitable, and inclusive neighborhoods.
Research
This public awareness campaign is timely as it comes during Sacramento County's Probation Department's new partnership with Vera Institute of Justice and CA's Office of Youth & Community Restoration to end girl incarceration—a relevant outcome of adultification bias. Central to J2J’s narrative campaign (Essence of Black Girlhood) is an understanding of research on the marginalization of Black girlhood through adultification and criminalization. Dr. Joy DeGruy, author of the book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, posits that this treatment of Black children is a result of multigenerational trauma, a form of “appropriate adaptation when living in a hostile environment” dating back to the efforts of enslaved women to try to protect their children from being sold. Many girls and women from Black communities live with silent resentment that exacerbates the impacts of generational and situational trauma rooted in the development of girls.
PAST EVENTS
The campaign began with engaging authentic voices in geographically based Story Circles in Del Paso Heights, Oak Park, and Meadowview to learn and document oral histories. Story Circles are an opportunity to share and discuss personal stories about experiences as Black girls through a facilitated and safe space.
our partners
