Like many young people, Dom Ricks came to college unsure of what he wanted to do.
“At that point I didn’t know. I just know I really wanted to impact social change,” he says.
He also knew whatever he did, poetry would be a part of it. In fact, it was poetry that got him into college — when he heard a recruiter for the University of Wisconsin’s First Wave arts program would be in the audience, he talked his way onto the stage at a WordPlay Poetry Slam in his hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
“I convinced them to put me on the list even though it was already filled up,” he says. “I performed with a recruiter in the audience. Right after my performance, I went to go talk to her and she was very impressed. From there, she just told me what I needed to have academically and I made sure I had it.”
Once he arrived at UW, he studied some political science and earned a degree in sociology in 2014. He then went into Teach for America, where it became clear that education was going to be his venue for social change. But he knew he’d need more education for himself first.
“(I) came back to UW because I knew I wanted to make an impact on education,” he says. “I knew with that alternative route to education, I didn’t have half as much information and knowledge that I needed to really make the changes that needed to happen. So I decided to fully commit. I went back and got my master’s. I just got my master’s in K-12 administration with a focus on social justice.”
Now the Dean of Students at Glacier Creek Middle School, Ricks has been teaching and coaching poetry and spoken word performance — but is ready to refocus on creating art himself.
“It’s starting to be more of a bigger thing,” he says. “I’ve been doing a lot more speeches and I’ve been teaching poetry. I’ve done poetry clubs. I’ve coached poetry. I’m just now starting to get to the point where I really want to get back to creating and doing for myself rather than teaching young kids how to do it. Of course, that plays a part but I’m really just trying to get back into the performance myself. For the past three years, I’ve been doing a whole lot of speeches, a whole lot of speeches and a whole lot of coaching. Now, I’m at that point where I want to start doing my art for me again.”
Ricks will perform two pieces at the MLK Forum for Social Change this Saturday at the Middleton Performing Arts Center, an event co-sponsored by several area school districts which organizer Percy Brown hopes will create a “space for a different narrative” around Martin Luther King.
Or, at least, deepen the narrative, Ricks says.
“I feel like a lot of times kids are given the watered down version of black history,” he says. “In some cases, in places like Wisconsin … kids have very shallow understandings of what actually happened and what it actually meant. It’s just like these key dates and times and things are thrown at kids. But we really don’t go very deep into what that means, and what it means to actually train activists to be prepared to be spit on, be prepared to be hit, to willingly get arrested, knowing that they probably wouldn’t even have bail money. It’s a lot deeper than what most people know. It also, even though it’s a lot deeper than what most people know about King, is even less known about the other activists who also sacrificed a whole lot.”
Ricks will perform along with middle school dance team GK4Life. Brown, nationally-known education professor Gloria Ladson-Billings and civil rights-era activist Charles Brown will also speak.
The event is free and open to the public and will take place Saturday, January 19 from 4 to 6 pm at the Middleton Performing Arts Center at Middleton High School. 2100 Bristol Street. Madison365 is the exclusive media sponsor of the event. Watch Percy Brown discuss the event with Neil Heinen on this past Sunday’s For the Record:
