These past months Hamlet's words have been apt: "The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold." Despite all the challenges our world is facing today, the only extreme apparent in Tamara Williams' world seems to be her joy.
"Carver played a major part in who I am today," Tamara recently shared with us. "I began by attending Carver's after-school program. I worked as a Carver summer camp counselor and then worked for Carver's CASPER after-school program for elementary students at the Carver Community Center. Carver helped me find my passion for my community and in helping others."
Tamara attended our annual Spring College Tour in 2013. Her account of the group's visit to the Shaw University campus was published here in the Norwalk Patch.
Shaw was the first school on the schedule for the Carver Foundation of Norwalk's 43rd annual college tour. We were greeted by Marcus McElveen, son of Mark McElveen, who coaches our rival Brien McMahon varsity girls' basketball team. I also learned that his uncle is the Recreation Coordinator for the Carver Foundation of Norwalk. Marcus, who is more than six feet tall, ran into our chartered coach bus to greet us and welcome us to Shaw. Sports must run deep in the McElveen family because Marcus is an Assistant Coach of the Shaw University Football team. Marcus credits Ms. Novelette Peterkin for introducing him to Shaw University eight years ago when he was one of the students on the college tour.
Tamara graduated from Norwalk High School in 2014. She then attended Morris College, a private, Baptist historically black college in Sumter, South Carolina. Founded in 1908, the college was named after the Reverend Frank Morris because of his outstanding leadership throughout the African American community of South Carolina. “They gave me a foundation,” Tamara said. “Morris was the place that molded me into who I am.”
Tamara spent the final year and a half of her undergraduate experience at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University (Alabama A& M University), another historical black college and university (HBCU) and a traditional 1890 land-grant institution. She graduated cum laude in 2019.
During her time at Alabama A&M University, Tamara completed an internship with Madison County, working for the Commissioner for District 6. Her experiences during her college years also included working as an advocate for recently released criminals, "giving them and their families a second chance at life."
Tamara is a member of the Phi Beta Lambda Business Fraternity and the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.
Tamara is presently preparing to take the LSAC exam in order to attend law school later this year. She is also working part-time for a private law firm in Montgomery, Alabama.
"Needless to say, my focus in law will be Civil Rights. Carver not only gave me one of my first jobs but supplied me with endless mentors, role models, an amazing support system, and exposure to things I never knew."
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men were created equal, he owned slaves. Women couldn't vote. But our abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights leaders called on our nation to live up to the nation's professed ideals in that Declaration. That is the tradition we are proud to see Tamara commit herself to advance. During this fraught time in our nation's history it is helpful to remember that the civil rights movement continues to achieve its goals without resorting to violence.
While the extremes we have endured these past years have been "very cold” and have "bit shrewdly," and long after all the recent manifestoes and polemics are forgotten, Tamara's career in advancing civil rights will endure. Tamara will help us heal and make progress. Tamara and her peers will help us find clarity and lasting solutions.
And through it all, what seems most enduring about Tamara is her capacity for joy. Carver is many things to many people since our organization’s founding in 1938. Perhaps Carver's most lasting legacy will be our capacity for joy.