'True Rabble-Rouser:' YWCA Metropolitan Chicago CEO Nicole Robinson on Sue Bailey Thurman and the State of Chicago

Chicago-born and raised Nicole Robinson has been CEO of the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago since January. In this Women’s History Month interview, she discusses the structures and systems Chicago needs for its residents to succeed, and also Sue Bailey Thurman, who traveled to India with her husband to meet Mohandas Gandhi, 20 years ahead of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent civil rights movement.

by Suzanne Hanney & Cora Saddler

StreetWise: You grew up on the South Side of Chicago, raised by a single mom. You know what it is like to use food stamps and to wait for a housing voucher. You were a product of Chicago Public Schools and DePaul University for both your undergrad finance and your MBA degrees. What worked for you that could help more people of similar background to succeed?

Nicole Robinson: As a single working parent, my mom was smart, resourceful and pretty resilient. She had a small circle of people whom she could turn to help raise both my brother and me. That circle of people included my grandmother Lueavery Partee, who migrated to Chicago from Arkansas and would settle in the Roseland Heights community near 95th Street. My grandmother would watch us after school and on weekends. Our circle also included girlfriends turned Godparents, co-workers from the hair salon where she worked, neighbors who informed her if we left our neighborhood block and warm-hearted passionate teachers who understood that a good education and love could co-exist. The library would become my de facto after-school program, where I could explore ideas and places outside of my neighborhood. Everyone in our circle whether relative, neighbor, librarian or teacher, contributed to my growth and development. These were the people who fostered my imagination and invested in my future. So when you ask what worked for me – it is the circle of people my mom exposed us to who would regularly tell us that we were beautiful, that we could achieve anything and that this world is a big place where we can be seen and heard. Chicago’s schools, libraries and parks worked for me.

Today, what I think we have is a failure of structures and systems, because my experience in Chicago shouldn’t be one of the few.

Our structures and systems should be designed to ensure that every single person who walks any block in Chicago neighborhoods is able to reach their absolute full potential. The experience should be as trauma-free as possible, where basic needs are met without judgment. They should be set up with a set of framework tools. The sad reality, is, that they aren’t.

I’d say that my mom and now, my nephew, continue to be sources of inspiration for me. My mom is in her 80’s and has a big imagination, is super opinionated, follows politics and has policy ideas on how to make our world better. My nephew, who is 21, has a big heart and is thoughtful and earnest as he navigates the world with autism. Both of them are in a constant state of exploration – so for me “reaching your full potential” is inclusive of everyone young, old, differently abled, BIPOC. It’s everyone.

StreetWise: So enough already of the narrative about exceptional heroes and heroines?

Nicole Robinson: That’s right.

We need to change the structures and systems so it’s not so hard for people. They need to bring the insight into schools and then, they need to be able to expose young people to spaces and give them an opportunity to dream. Kids should not learn under the worst circumstances, where they have inadequate books, or outdated technology.

Nicole Robinson

(courtesy photo)

The narrative can be, ‘There was equity in learning, equity in life experience, and in economic opportunity.’ We also need to make sure that there’s no stigma, because there’s a reason our federal government has safety net programs like food stamps and housing vouchers. We’ve witnessed a bit of this during the pandemic, which shined a light on all of the inequities: the double-digit unemployment that existed in neighborhoods, in a pre-pandemic world, the high rates of chronic health conditions, which were a contributing factor, to the fatality rates, and hospitalizations, from COVID. For COVID, in Black and Brown communities, the data tells us this information. We have to figure out how we bring equity to all of those dynamics that contribute to whether or not someone reaches their full potential. It's not one thing; there's this intersectionality.

StreetWise: Sue Bailey Thurman, who worked with the YWCA in the 1920s and who, with her husband, visited Mohandas Gandhi in India in the 1930s, is one of your historic inspirations. What is it about her?

Nicole Robinson: Both Howard Thurman and Sue Bailey Thurman are unsung heroes and architects of the Civil Rights movement. Their trip to visit Gandhi would occur 20 years ahead of Dr. King serving as a source of both inspiration and resistance for the modern day civil rights movement. Sue Bailey Thurman was one of the few women on this trip who would interrogate Gandhi about the role of Black people in the non-violent resistance movement. I'm inspired by Sue Bailey’s courage to lift her voice and channel her activism amidst a delegation and movement dominated by men. It’s interesting to note that Sue Bailey would go on to work with the national YWCA, recruiting Black women members on college campuses. Today, many women are channeling their inner Sue Bailey in their lives as they advocate for economic, racial and social justice. Imagine the courage it took for her to do that! She was a true rabble-rouser.

StreetWise: How was the YWCA at the forefront?

Nicole Robinson: I learned YWCA Metropolitan Chicago was the first to integrate swimming pools when we had them, to integrate housing when women were migrating www.streetwise.org 9 from the South as part of the Great Migration. We were advocating for the rights of women in a lot of different ways. We just need to double down on that, and unmute ourselves.

The YWCA is like any other institution in the sense that when you’re 150 years old, you get institutionalized in doing things a certain way. Maybe we call it a ‘reawakening.’

StreetWise: You worked with Kraft Foods and Mondelez International on emerging markets from Brazil to Ghana. Do emerging markets have lessons for undercapitalized areas of Chicago?

Nicole Robinson: Whether in the barrio, in Brazil, in South Africa or India, emerging markets do share some commonality around some of the challenges that our communities face. I can remember, in my travels, seeing the similarities, but I also know that in my travels, I would be asked, ‘why is there so much violence in Chicago?’

I think there was a time when I was traveling around the world when the top three issues at the time in Chicago were poverty, racism and violence.

And you could ask anyone in the world that question, and they could probably play back that they thought those were the top three issues. We’ve had this moment with the pandemic. There’s federal money coming. The City of Chicago is getting $1.9 billion and Cook County government is getting another billion dollars to invest in some of the infrastructure problems, not put a bandage on issues, but actually make progress on some of the inequities in education, some of the inequities in business. How do we get capital – which is the biggest barrier for Black- and Brown-owned businesses – how do we get capital to them?

Streetwise: When you were at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, you did something similar with $10 million for food pantries on the South and West Sides.

Nicole Robinson: The food bank has 700 programs and partners across Cook County. And 30 percent of them have sizeable budgets, and some have staff of three or less. The majority were volunteer-led. And we were asking a primarily volunteer-led, or shoestring-budget network, to be responsible for this huge food need: double-digit food insecurity rates.

What we needed to do was actually lift them up and invest in them as small nonprofits and transform their capacity. It was more than getting them infrastructure like refrigerators and freezers.

The goal was to transform the experience for people and pantries. People would come to the pantry, and it would feel less equitable than in well-resourced communities, where you get a grocery store experience. If you were on the South and West Sides of the city, you got a more muted experience, a dingy room with no sun shining through.

I wanted to destigmatize it. We could have murals on the wall, bright lights so we could change the experience. We could also make sure that the food that was available was comparable to choices people might have in a grocery store. We could make sure everything was culturally relevant.

We could also make sure that it was not just about handing out food, but also that people had access to safety net programs, like food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit.

StreetWise: How does the YWCA history reflect this environment, and what is most important going forward?

Nicole Robinson: We're at a moment that is key to our mission. Our mission of empowering women and eliminating racism is more relevant now more than ever in our 145-year history. We’re in the midst of a She-cession where the convergence of work, home and school has singlehandedly disempowered primarily Black and Brown women. This, coupled with a racial reckoning, threatened and the YWCA would need to double down on our efforts and explore how gender, racial and economic equity shows up in everything that we do. As a 145-year-old organization, we stand on the shoulders of women who were at the forefront of advancing gender and equity – and we’re in the next evolution.

An 1950 YWCA integrated beach get together.

(YWCA historical archives photo)