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July 19, 2022
To catch you up, when we last talked with Cymone, she had just joined the Tulsa Remote program and was serving as the City Manager of Tullahassee, Oklahoma’s oldest historic black town. She is incredibly passionate about that community and lead the charge in building an all-black boarding school for the town, to be called Kingdom Come International. Her goal in her time there was to create a sustainable economic system that enables the town to not just survive but thrive. You can read our first blog post about her here!
Earlier this year, Cymone resigned as Tullahassee Town Manager. What does that mean for the town of Tullahassee? Well, Cymone has created a consulting firm called Black Towns Municipal Management (BTMM), to scale the work for other black townships. The mission is to create town sustainability through community redevelopment and government infrastructure.
She is still working on building the boarding school, and is back in school herself after being accepted into the Global Executive Doctor of Education program at the University of Southern California. She says, “As I’m building a school, I’m back in school. The irony --but very intentional." As a Doctoral student, she’s ready to leverage USC’s network and resources for Kingdom Come International.
As if Cymone isn't busy enough, she always has another trick up her sleeve! In 2020, she received a NFL Social Justice Grant and resolved to use the funds to produce a song and music video titled “MORE MONEY”. The project was inspired by her beloved town, Tullahassee, making U.S. History and national news last year by joining the MORE Coalition (Mayors Organized for Reparations & Equity). The Coalition stands on the belief that cities can — and should — act as laboratories for bold ideas that can be transformative for racial and economic justice on a larger scale, and demonstrate for the country how to pursue and improve initiatives that take a reparatory approach to confronting and dismantling structural and institutional racism. The video was officially released on Independence Day of this year!