Mentor Program Has Simple Message For Black Students: You’re Not Alone
Wayne Miller is starting a mentorship program for black students across the Upper Valley and in Burlington, VT. Photo by Britta Greene for NHPR
Wayne Miller is known around Claremont for his work on addiction. He runs a local recovery center, and he has been instrumental in keeping support services in the community for those struggling with opioid use.
He can talk about addiction and recovery “left and right and sideways,” he says. But something he’d rarely spoken about in public before last year is race.
The first spark was an incident in January 2017. A selectboard member in Miller’s hometown — Hartford, VT — forwarded a racist image, which denigrated the Obamas and former US Attorney General Eric Holder, to a local newspaper writer.
The newspaper ran a story about the incident, and Miller decided to go to the Selectboard’s next meeting. The room was packed.
Miller, a black man, noticed something immediately remarkable to him: lots of non-white faces. There were more people of color than he’d ever seen in one space in the Upper Valley.
One by one, local residents stood up to address the board, describing discrimination and hate they’d experienced in the community, and urging board members to take action.
“It was like a reawakening for me,” Miller said. “I felt more connected to the wider community, and to what really deep down is my community, than I had ever before while living here.”
Miller moved to the area as a kid, and for most of his life, he had dealt with racially motivated jeers, comments, and side-eyed glances on his own. He hadn’t spoken out about his experience. But now, seeing others equally frustrated, that was starting to shift.
Miller hadn’t planned to speak at the meeting, but he stood up to take his turn in front of the microphone. “I just want to say that I’m tired,” he began, describing the physical attacks he withstood as a child and urging change.