When Patricia Bosman, a lifelong St. Louisan and executive director of the nonprofit Haven of Grace, started her time as a participant in the Institute for Black Liberation’s inaugural cohort last fall, she was no stranger to courses focused on making people better leaders. What she got from the immersive program changed her life.
“I expected to walk away with a book of solutions. What I got was transformation, a type of freedom, [an] insight into self and others,” Bosman said. “I was driving home after one of the sessions and realized I needed to deal with something I had been carrying since I was 7 years old. And in a day or two, I made a phone call and dealt with it. That was just one of the many aha moments I experienced.”
The Institute for Black Liberation at the Deaconess Foundation provides a space where Black people can work through and heal from the effects of internal and structural racism. Finding joy in that work and in Blackness are key tenets of the program.
For Rudy Nickens, director of the institute, the program is a manifestation of a dream born decades ago that needed the right partners and timing to come to life. The program involves three weeks of sessions, held on weekdays and limited to no more than eight hours, over several months.
“This personal work is critical. We’re not naive or silly enough to think that if I get my own work done, if I'm healed, if I'm in good shape, that all of a sudden the effects of systemic racism go away,” Nickens said. “We'll be much more effective at changing the world around us and building and creating the world that we want.”
Nickens said joy and diversity within Blackness are integral to the power of the institute.
“People get trained to believe that when you see somebody crying that they're in pain, and we actually don't believe that. I think every time I shed a tear, it's outward evidence that I'm healing from something.”
Nickens continued: “We celebrate Black culture every day … sometimes when I'm in a room and most of the people are white or all the people are white, except for me, all I can feel is my Blackness. But when I'm in a room with all Black people, I can feel my age, my gender, my sexual orientation, and my faith tradition … all the other complex pieces of me. So now I'm the Black old gay guy in the room and the Black Christian guy in the room. That really makes a huge difference.”
The Deaconess Foundation, whose service area includes eastern Missouri and southern Illinois, provides a home for the Institute for Black Liberation and funds the program with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Bethany Johnson-Javois, president and CEO of the Deaconess Foundation, asserted that changing individuals regardless of station or title is key to changing structures and systems. That belief guides participant selection.
“The word leader assigns an assumption of a person who has arrived, who is in a professionalized career [and] hit 100 out of 100,” she said. “We have a commitment that ‘transformed people transform systems.’ So a person who's willing to do the work … to identify barriers and blockages that keep them from being free and liberated … we’re looking more for a person who has the courage and audacity to do that."
“We wanted to make sure that people felt that they could be called into this work, regardless of where they work, how long they've worked, what they get paid to work or what title they've been given to work,” Johnson-Javois said.
The Institute for Black Liberation’s application period for this fall’s cohort is closed. Application submissions for the 2025-26 cohort begin in March.
To hear what sets the institute apart from other programs, how it combines healing and joy, why its first cohort is numbered Cohort 100 rather than Cohort 1 — and podcast-only bonus content about connections between the institute and the Ferguson Uprising of 2014 — listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube; or click the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Ulaa Kuziez, Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Roshae Hemmings is our production assistant. Our audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
