As a child of the 60's – age of miracles and mountaintops, King and Malcolm, poets and breadbaskets – I grew up certain that everything was possible. Everything told me so; and so I quietly assumed our trajectory of triumph would arch on. I won second grade Third Prize for my “Brotherhood Week” poster, and began planning how I would save the world. At 14 I inherited the esoteric library of my uncle and began devouring the wisdom of the ages.
As our glorious advances seemed to wane over time, I learned both pride and shame in my blackness. I watched as my mother and “shero” battled the New York legislature to bring black history into all public schools, and wondered what could be so wrong with the idea. She failed and started her own black history classes, and dedicated herself to healing what ailed us with garden parties, church teas, UNCF fundraisers, and the occasional tempest – like dumping our block's trash in the street to protest poor City pickup. We made the evening news, and I dreamed on that I would save the world.
I awoke in the age of climate change, granddaughter of sharecroppers cluelessly consuming global food; witnessing the extinction of black, self-sustaining, mixed-income communities like St. Albans, Queens where I grew up, and Minter City, Mississippi where my mother did – appalled at the notion of my life coach that “the world wasn't broken and I wasn't born to fix it.”
In the walkable village where I was raised, the printer...gift shop...dry cleaner...shoe repair...photo studio...pharmacy....fish and produce man...dentist...bus service...restaurants (I could go on)...and the commercial buildings that housed them were all neighbor-owned. In my Mom's walkable village, everything they ate, they grew; everything they wore, they made; and they were happy. They had everything but cash and thought they were poor. But they were rich.
I came to feel my purpose was to create self-sustaining African diaspora communities, and in 2007 founded BIG: Blacks in Green™ where, instead of a fixing a broken world, I use the power of my happiness to generate green opportunity. I developed a model I call “The 8 Principles of Green-Village-Building,” and as an attorney, entrepreneur and activist, enjoy working to serve as a bridge between communities, developers, churches, schools, and businesses collaborating on neighborhoods to foster business opportunity, civic activism, and healthy lifestyle. My mission is to encourage embrace of green-village-building – with its foundation of jobs, careers enterprises – as a whole-system opportunity for building health and wealth in black communities. Just as I was discovering to do, I invite my community to return to our great legacy of environmental stewardship and to the common sense of yesterday’s self-sustaining neighborhoods.
One such project has been the Ton Family Underground Railroad Living Heritage Farm & Village on the Little Calumet River – site of a former safe house for fugitive freedom-seekers and proposed planned green development at the epicenter a multi-state network of hiking, biking, boating, birding, and camping. This cultural and eco-tourism destination aims for the rich circulation of community wealth my old neighborhood embodied, featuring neighbor-owned businesses and new best practices like development without displacement, local energy production and resource management, affordable housing and conservation land trusts, and green homes – from public housing, SRO's, co-housing, grandparent suites to single and multi-family, rented and owned – all built while training neighbors in green careers such as construction, native plant and seed cultivation, urban forestry, aquaculture, and community performance which underscores a “sense of place.”
I graduated from P.S. 15 Queens, Jewish prep schools on Long Island, Fisk University, and John Marshall Law School. I serve as a Green For All Fellow, and on the boards of the Illinois League of Conservation Voters, Chicagoland Green Collar Jobs Initiative, Chicago Climate Action/Green Jobs For All Committee, Good Greens, the Chicago-Calumet Underground Railroad Effort, and the editorial board of Environmental Justice Magazine.I've been honored with Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn's Environmental Hero Award in 2007, Chicago Magazine's Green Award in 2008, and the Jewel-Osco Award for Environmental Stewardship in 2009. I am most grateful for the education in service I received from my mother, and I’m happy to invest all that she helped me become in the genius and the promise of my community, and in the health and wealth of all my relations, and especially for a new epoch of greatness where we all re-root as earth community and learn to “make an oasis” wherever we live.
Naomi Davis is an urban theorist, attorney, activist, and proud granddaughter of Mississippi sharecroppers. She is President and Founder of BIG: Blacks in Green.™ In that role, she serves as a bridge and catalyst among communities and their stakeholders in the design and development of neighborhoods that foster business opportunity, civic activism, and healthy lifestyle. Since launching BIG™ at Green Festival/Chicago in 2007, Naomi has featured and introduced thousands of blacks‐in‐green in her national organizing and speaking engagements. Her groundbreaking work to engage new and existing practitioners in the commerce and lifestyles of the “new green economy” was featured in the New York Times in March 2010. Prior to establishing BIG,™ Naomi owned the public affairs and marketing communications firm Song Shakir Davis, seasoned by careers in the business of theater and real estate. She is a Fisk University graduate with majors in Speech; Drama and English, and a Juris Doctor from John Marshall Law School. Naomi is a Green For All Fellow and serves on the GreenFestival Host Committee, Chicagoland Green Collar Jobs Initiative Steering Committee, Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council, and Environmental Justice Magazine Editorial Board. For her work in green community economic development, Naomi has received Lt. Governor Pat Quinn’s 2007 Environmental Hero Award, the 2008 Chicago Magazine Green Award, the Jewel-Osco Environmental Stewardship Award, and the 2010 Citizen Newspapers “10 Community Leaders To Watch” and Ebony Magazine Power100.
As a child of the 60's – age of miracles and mountaintops, King and Malcolm, poets and breadbaskets – I grew up certain that everything was possible. Everything told me so; and so I quietly assumed our trajectory of triumph would arch on. I won second grade Third Prize for my “Brotherhood Week” poster, and began planning how I would save the world. At 14 I inherited the esoteric library of my uncle and began devouring the wisdom of the ages.