Promoting literacy in the community
Just two days after Pastor T.L. Barrett, founder of The Life Center C.O.G.I.C. who headed the church 56 years ago, passed the torch to his children as co-pastors, Rev. Keisha and Torrey Barrett, they sponsored a “Riding with Reading” press conference Tuesday, August 6th, with Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-7th) to promote literacy among youth, family and the entire community.
The event was held two days after Pastor Barrett, 80, installed his daughter and son as co-pastors of The Life Center C.O.G.I.C., better known as “The Miracle on 55th Street.” Pastor Keisha Barrett’s daughter, Dr. Quenna Barrett, presented the co-pastors with their new installation crowns. “I am more than honored by it because my father was head of the church for 56 years. “I’m 54, and I’ve been around since then, listening to his words and teaching and watching others call him pastor. Now some of those same people are calling me pastor, which is deeply humbling to me,” she told the Chicago Crusader.
It was also held 17 years after the murder-suicide of Pastor Barrett’s youngest daughter, Kleo Barrett, then a Cook County sheriff’s deputy was murdered by a man she had dated three years earlier. He also committed suicide. “That is why we had a book I and my then 7-year-old son, Jabril Barrett, wrote after my sister was murdered. Jabril was very close to his aunt,” she told the Chicago Crusader. Writing that book proved to be psychologically therapeutic for her son. She also brought the book as a reminder of the life and legacy of her sister.
Rep. Davis said the event is timely given the fact that Trump’s proposed Project 2025 is set to abolish the U.S. Board of Education, including eliminating Black history that continues in rhetorical classing between the two parties as Republican elected officials continue to introduce laws limiting the topics of Black history, can and cannot be taught in schools especially Black history, gender identity and sexual orientation that can be taught in public schools.
Joining Pastor Keisha Barrett and Rep. Davis were famed writer, songwriter, and rapper Che “Rhymefest” Smith, Trevor Baldwin, the nephew of writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin, Tamera Fair, owner of the Premier Child Care Center, and several children including 8-year-old Ron Holt, the son of retired Chicago police commander, Ron Holt, who recited, “My Literacy Journey,” and 11-year-old Zoie Alexandria Joseph, from Forest Park, who won the Bronze Jefferson Awards for her book, “Confident Girls For the Curious Brace and Bold Girls.” She is also the author of “I Did It. Zoie Learns to Potty,” “I Really Don’t Want to: Zoie Learns to Share.”
In an interview with the Chicago Crusader, Rep. Davis said, “We were thrilled and delighted with the young authors and Trevor Baldwin who came in from New York along with Che “Rhymefest” Smith and especially Ron Holt and Zoie Joseph, who were off the chart” in their eloquent speeches. “I saw some books there I will read like the late NBA star Scottie Pippen’s ‘Unguarded,” who lived12 miles from where Davis grew up in Parkdale, Arkansas.
Davis told of having to go to a one-room school when he was growing up in Southeast Arkansas, a new town then known as the ‘ArkLaMiss’ area where Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi came together. There were no high schools in this area, and his cousins had to go away to attend high school.
Davis was fortunate because he learned how to read when he was four years old with the help of his mother and father, who only had a fourth-grade education to attend high school near his home but only for five months out of a year beginning in January and ending the first week of May. For the rest of the year, Davis helped his father, H.B. Davis, a sharecropper, chop and pick cotton and gather hay and other dues on their farm. “I worked. When I was ten years old, I was picking up 100-pound bags of fertilizer, helping my father fertilize the ground and plant cotton,” he said, crediting his current back pains to his childhood farm work.
“There wasn’t a single Black person in my town who had a college degree, even the principal. She only had three years of college. She eventually got a degree. I graduated from the Arkansas AM&N College, now known as the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, with two of my elementary school teachers. We all graduated together,” recalled Davis. When Davis graduated from college, he did so with his elementary teachers.
When he enrolled in college on September 6, 1957, on his 16th birthday, Davis said he had $20 and a $50 scholarship from the state of Arkansas. That scholarship was supposed to go to the class’s valedictorian, but Davis did not have that distinction. He replaced Lillian Donnegan, who couldn’t figure out how to attend college after her mother died.
“Reading is what got me there, and having Miss Beadie King as my teacher,” said Davis. “She was the first and the high school English teacher. I used all the poems and quotes sometimes; Miss Beadie King taught me.” “The hands that used to pick cotton now help pick presidents.”
Rhymefest thanked everyone responsible for the “Riding With Reading” press conference, including the Barrett co-pastors, retired Pastor T.L. Barrett, the Kleo Center, and the Healthy Hoods Center. He labeled the event “The Living Word” and said, “If you want to become a genius, read what the geniuses wrote, what they thought,” then share it with the community.
Baldwin brought his favorite book, “Donda’s Rules,’ by Dr. Donda West, the mother of Kanye West, better known as Ye, who was the dean of the English Department at Chicago State University. “She taught many boys, not just how to be in the industry. She taught us how to be humane. She taught us how to use our art and creativity as a human experience, not a money experience.”
Torrey and Keisha Barrett, the children of retired Pastor T.L. Barrett, who founded and pastored The Life Center C.O.G.I.C. for 56 years, officially passed the torch to his children as co-pastors on Sunday, August 4, 2024. Pastor Keisha Barrett’s daughter, Dr. Quenna Barrett, installed them with their father looking on.
