About FREEDOM THIRTEEN
Freedom Thirteen Inc. is a nonprofit community organization. Our organization provides informative and community programs, tours, masterclasses and workshops that will educate, entertain, and provide self-healing. Freedom Thirteen originates from the 13th Amendment - Abolishment of slavery in America in 1865. With our signature, custom tours, and storytelling, we take you on a journey of the life challenges African Americans endured that contributed to building America. Our tours and programs will educate you on the strength, the dream, the destiny of African Americans and those who came before us.
At Freedom Thirteen, Our mission is to construct and maintain healing, divine purpose and passion to disadvantage communities through a holistic, grassroots system of action plans that includes educational workshops, masterclasses and tours of African American history that contributes to the enhancement of quality of life, mental development and sustainability for all.
From experience, we know open mindsets will seek unity as it gains a sense of understanding and stability with the learning of African Americans' contributions before and after they were set free from slavery. We are focused on making the maximum effort for our community. Using data driven models, we have and will continue to provide solutions that make a long-lasting difference. Our members and volunteers provide the work, efforts and momentum that helps us affect change.
THE FOUNDER
Beatrice Hardy, the founder, created this curriculum for youth, parents, community organizations and educational institutions. Ms. Bea’s Historical Community Tours will provide signature tours that will explain how being free within self is foreseeing the importance of unity through history. Together it will accomplish its goals through engaging creative life-skill activities, tours, and workshops. The ultimate mission is to connect Chicago one community at a time.
CORE VALUES
Psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner designed the Ecological System Theory. He believed a child’s environment can affect their growth and development. He said there are five stages to providing a child with the tools needed to be productive in life.
NUMBER ONE
The microsystem: the things that have direct contact with the child in their immediate environment such as home and school.
NUMBER TWO
The mesosystem: the interaction of the different microsystems which children find themselves in such as parents, siblings, teacher, and peers.
NUMBER THREE
The ecosystems: the linkages that may exist between two or more settings.
NUMBER FOUR
The macrosystem: the largest and most distant collection of people and places to the children that still have significant influences on them such as neighborhoods, parent’s workplace, and mass media.
NUMBER FIVE
The Chronosystem: the environmental changes that occur over the lifetime which influence development, including major life transitions, and historical events.
History tells us that the trauma African Americans braved remains an obstruction to the growth and development of the black and brown child, generation after generation. Our programs are designed around both Bronfenbrenner’s theory and African American 1940 psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s “the doll test”. Their test concluded how devastating segregation had on African American children’s self-esteem. Our programs are designed for black and brown communities, yet we welcome all who’s interested in understanding the meaning of freedom to self, family, community, and bringing unity to the unrest by connecting one community to the next until all of Chicago is unified.
BROWN V. BOARD AND "THE DOLL TEST"
Doctors Kenneth and Mamie Clark and "The Doll Test"
In the 1940s, psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark designed and conducted a series of experiments known colloquially as “the doll tests” to study the psychological effects of segregation on African-American children.
Drs. Clark used four dolls, identical except for color, to test children’s racial perceptions. Their subjects, children between the ages of three to seven, were asked to identify both the race of the dolls and which color doll they prefer. A majority of the children preferred the white doll and assigned positive characteristics to it. The Clarks concluded that “prejudice, discrimination, and segregation” created a feeling of inferiority among African-American children and damaged their self-esteem.