If Tamir Rice were alive today, he’d be a 17-year-old senior looking forward to graduating from high school. He would have been the last of Samaria Rice’s four children to get a high school diploma — a dream Rice says was always at the forefront of her mind when raising her kids.
“If Tamir was alive today, we wouldn’t be here on the phone,” she says. “I would be on my way to four high school graduates instead of three.”
On Nov. 22, 2014, Tamir was shot by a Cleveland police officer and fatally wounded while playing with a toy gun in front of a gazebo at Cudell Commons. In the days that followed, that gazebo became a gathering place where friends, family and community members could come and remember him. With the help of local activists, Rice oversaw the building of a butterfly garden built by some of Tamir’s peers and underwent art therapy with her daughter, Tajai, as a way to heal through all the terrible grief. It was through that healing process Rice realized the power art can have over a community.
“Art is a way to express yourself,” says Rice. “It helps get out those feelings and thoughts you have.”
Now, with the help of local activist and artist, Amanda D. King, founder of the nonprofit Shooting Without Bullets, Rice is dedicated to renovating the former Slovenian Daily News building at 6117 St. Clair Ave. into the Tamir Rice Afrocultural Center. The idea is to create a space in which inner city children can access after school programming that fosters the imagination and furthers education through Pan-African studies, art, mentoring, music and theater.
“Tamir has always been a part of a world that I provided for him with the arts, mentoring and tutoring because I implemented those things in his life the best way I could,” says Rice. “He really benefitted from those types of things and I think it’s really important our children have that experience.”
As part of the fifth anniversary commemoration of Tamir’s life at the Cleveland Museum of Art Nov. 20, Rice will unveil the design of the new center which will include a black box theater for kids to develop their own performances.
The event will also include a live conversation between journalist and activist Bakari Kitwana and Theaster Gates, founder of Rebuild Foundation, who currently presides over the former Cudell Commons gazebo at Chicago’s Stony Island Arts Bank. A screening of Emmy-nominated documentary Traveling While Black will occur alongside performances by artists such as ballet dancer Lexy Lattimore and remarks from international activists such as Opal Tometi, co-founder of Black Lives Matter.
“Artists are expressing themselves in a way the community can respond positively to,” says Rice. “We all need some uplifting and courage.”
Although Rice says the renovations for the new center have yet to begin, she’s currently raising the funds to finish the project and hopes she can begin programming by June 25, 2020 — which would have been Tamir’s 18th birthday.
“Taking the structure of how I raised my kids is how I’m basically developing the center because I know their worth,” says Rice. “I know it can save a child’s life if they think no one is out there.”
Read More: In 2016, we followed Tamir Rice's mother's fight for justice and efforts to rebuild and advocate for her community in a profile "For Tamir." Click here to read that story.
