Spotlights
Crystal Scott-Tunstall shares her story on growing up in Chicago, where her family marched with Martin Luther King Jr, and her community inspired her to empower people
September 15, 2022
Author: Maureen Strand
Crystal Scott-Tunstall is an affiliate professor and internship coordinator with the Environmental and Sustainability program at Brooks College. Crystal is known to many of us for her vast knowledge of horticulture, her work with local non-profit organizations and committees, and her additional skills and passions, such as professional skill mentorship and food canning and preservation. She has recently been appointed as Co-Chair of the Kent County Food Policy Council. Her experience, connections, and insights bring a vast wealth to our learning community. Crystal’s background provides deep insight into what drives her, and how her life’s path has led her to where she is today.
Crystal was born and raised in Chicago. Her family roots there run deep. Her grandfather and grandmother migrated from the south during the Great Migration. Her mother was a small child at the time. They settled in a home on the north side of Chicago, and her grandfather worked as a pullman porter on the railway. They lived in Chicago during the tenure of mayor Richard J. Daley, who was a proponent of redlining and racial segregation. When the mayor homed in on their neighborhood as the site for one of the first housing projects in Chicago, the infamous Cabrini-Green project, he began to force residents out of their homes to clear the area for construction. Her grandfather tried to fight against losing his home, but he did not have an education, and the system worked against him. He lost his home through imminent domain laws to the city, and their family was forced to relocate. The Cabrini-Greens project was built in their former neighborhood on the north side of Chicago.
Her grandfather relocated his family to a home on the west side of Chicago. After he lost his home due to redlining, he connected with an organization that was challenging employment, education, and housing discrimination in the city. The organization was the Chicago Freedom Movement, which was being co-led by Martin Luther King Jr. He famously moved his family to the Lawndale neighborhood in Chicago in 1966, seeking to draw national attention to the issue of discriminatory rental and mortgage lending practices. Crystal’s grandparents and her mother, who was still a child at the time, marched with King during his historic fair housing march through Marquette Park. “I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hostile and hate filled as I have seen in Chicago,” Dr. King said following the march.
“That says a lot for a man fighting for freedom in the south where he could have been lynched and lost his life,” said Crystal. “That began my grandfather’s passion for community, and his activism.”
In Chicago, residents would form local committees called block clubs. They consisted of leaders and concerned neighbors who all lived in the same immediate area. The groups would form to advocate for the interests of their neighborhoods. They would connect with other block clubs at local public places such as community centers or libraries, to exchange resources and discuss issues. Crystal’s grandfather was their block club’s leader, or “captain”. As he got older, he passed the leadership reigns down to Crystal’s mother.
“My mother was a single mother. She was active with her parents. In 68’, when Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, she described to us her community being burned down during the riots. And she said everything looked like hell, there was so much fire and people running everywhere.” Following the riots, their community, once vibrant with businesses and community activity, was torn up and run down. Many businesses did not come back afterward, and the state of the community caused property values to plunge. Seeing her community in so much pain activated her mother further. She started working with the Black Panthers. She focused on helping single mothers in her community with food. She had a car, unlike many of them. She would go to food pantries in other communities, get large amounts of food, and bring it back home. Crystal remembers as a child helping her mother sort the food out in the living room to give out to the families who needed it. She would also gather used clothing to give out to those in need, so that kids would have clothes for school. As a girl, Crystal attended block club meetings with her mother. She was curious and loved to be a part of her community and watch problem-solving in action.
People from the south were growers by nature, and Crystal’s family had always maintained a thriving family garden that supplied their family with healthy and fresh foods. But she recognized that her school peers did not know about food. All they had, and all they knew, was the food sold at the local grocery store. Crystal was not allowed to eat from the local grocery store, which sold only processed foods and poor-quality produce. Whatever they did not produce in their family garden, they would find at farmer’s markets outside of their community and bring back to their home. There, they would wash, prep, and preserve the foods through canning and freezing. Crystal developed a passion for growing and prepping food from a young age. This led her block club to recognize her talent and push her forward to help a new initiative they were working on, along with the other block clubs of their community. They were working with an organization called Greencorps Chicago to begin to convert vacant lots in the community into community gardens. The goal was to reduce crime and help produce fresh food for the community at the same time. The challenge they faced was that most block club members were senior citizens. And so, Crystal began to tie community activism in with her school life, as she sought to get help to bring her community’s garden to life.
Crystal attended high school at a math and science center two hours away from her home. Her favorite class was a horticulture course taught by a teacher who would become like a father to her. He was a dedicated mentor to Crystal. He went above and beyond, taking time to visit with Crystal’s mother at her kitchen table, to discuss her daughter’s talent and future. He advocated for her and put her in programs that would help her develop a career. He was a member of the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance, and he entered Crystal into a program for high school students there. She would go there after school, learn the different plants, and give tours. She was also able to participate in special events for the conservatory. He recognized that Crystal had a gift for plants, and he nurtured it. So, when it came time to build the community garden, and they needed a crew, Crystal turned to her teacher, and he created a field trip for their horticulture class. One spring day, they all came to her community, one that many of them had only seen in a bad light through negative news stories. Her block club members were gracious hosts, feeding the class with a delicious lunch and keeping the class well hydrated as they worked on installing and planting the garden. Crystal was overjoyed to have her peers come and see the true beauty of her community, through the warmth and caring of the people who lived there. To honor her, the block club named the garden “Crystal’s Peace Garden.” It is still thriving to this day, in the neighborhood where her family still lives, down the street from where she grew up.
Crystal reflects fondly on the support she received growing up in Chicago. It takes a village, or so the saying goes. And Crystal had an amazing village filled with kind, generous, and dedicated mentors who helped their community thrive. The garden that bears her name was able to be created thanks to the connections of the vice president of her block club. She could have been a top agent if she had ever been so inclined. She had a way of telling people how it was going to be and making it so. And nobody questioned her, as she was usually right. She considered Crystal to be like her own child. And Crystal’s own mother echoed the sentiment. “She is hers. She belongs to the community. She is not just mine.”
Another mentor was an elderly next-door neighbor whom Crystal often spent time with growing up. Whenever her mother wasn’t home, she knew to go to her neighbor’s house. They would drive around in her car running errands, getting food, talking, and having a good time together. She had a typewriter and loved to sit there typing out stories. She never had the opportunity to go to college, so when the time came for Crystal to set off to college, she asked her to come outside. She presented Crystal with a suitcase. She asked her to take it with her, so that she felt like she was going to college too. This touched Crystal deeply. She cherished the suitcase and kept it until it fell into pieces too bare to tape back together.
Crystal earned her undergraduate degree in Plant and Soil Science at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 2001. She became a teaching and research assistant in 2003, while pursuing her graduate studies at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. She earned her master’s degree in forestry in 2007. As she studied, she realized that she was very different than most of her peers in her field of study. She felt out of place at times, as there were not many students of color. But due to her strong start in life being so involved in her community, she was able to persevere and work in her chosen field.
After earning her graduate degree, she moved to Michigan with her husband Dwayne. He had a position as a visiting professor at GVSU, so they settled into the Grand Rapids area. For her first years in Michigan, Crystal worked for various non-profit organizations in the community. She worked as a grant writer and joined several community boards, ever the advocate for community improvement. She began to work as an adjunct professor for GVSU. She was also working for the Baxter Community Center.
Eventually, Crystal transitioned to be an affiliate professor in the Environmental and Sustainability Studies program. She quickly realized that her passion was guiding students in their professional development and career planning. She became the internship coordinator for her program. In this role, she thrived. She valued being able to have an impact on future generations. The more she worked with students, the more she started to notice the things that were missing from their college experience, and they were the same things she felt she had missed herself. As she worked with students, she really dug deep into their career ambitions, and helped connect them to internships and courses that would build a strong portfolio and resume for the specific path they wanted to take. Often, this could run contrary to traditional advice they may have received from a more generically focused counselor.
Crystal’s unique experience and connections allow her to be much more than just a professor and internship coordinator. She prides herself on being a bridge in many ways for those she helps. She is always happy to guide them and make connections where she can. But she often goes even further and becomes a mentor for her students, much like the mentors she benefited from growing up in Chicago. As a woman of color who has risen to local prominence in her field, her guidance is invaluable to the students of color she mentors. But she mentors other students as well for various reasons, whose chosen career path is specialized or who will face unique challenges.
Her enthusiasm for developing professional skills also sets her apart from a traditional academic. She will often sit down with her students and talk to them about their path, how to get there, and the challenges they must be willing to face. She guides them on how to optimize their resume for a specific job and prepares them on what to expect as they progress through their careers. In her courses, she takes the time to explain to her students the obstacles and hurdles they will face in the field of sustainability. She lectures about how important it is to understand the field is much more than just saving the earth. It is incredibly important to know how to work with people. You must learn how to form partnerships and foster connections between the community residents and the professional entities involved in projects and initiatives, to earn trust and ensure a smooth working relationship.
In 2020, Crystal was a member of the New City Neighbors board, a local community development organization in Grand Rapids. They received news that the lease on their 3-acre urban farm could not be renewed. This was a crisis for the organization, as it was coming just as demand for food donations was tripled due to the pandemic. Crystal recognized an opportunity for their organization to work together with GVSU on a solution. She brokered a partnership between the Sustainable Agriculture Project and New City Neighbors, and together they were able to erect a large gothic-style hoophouse that would be capable of supplying their food pantry with fresh produce year-round. This project has provided fresh produce to thousands of families in the local community.
Crystal’s goal and drive to be in academia is to give students as much real-world experience as possible. She sits on multiple committees in Grand Rapids, and she often brings real community partners into her classroom to speak about their projects and efforts, to give the students an idea of what organizations are already doing in our local community. It is important to her to give proper value to a variety of experiences, as not all learning happens in a neat orderly fashion. It is an accumulation of experiences, connections with people, and learning from non-traditional sources of knowledge as well. There are many people living in our communities that may possess more knowledge and experience on a given topic that any academic. Crystal enjoys giving her students exposure to such individuals, who are often found forming community coalitions and committees. She seeks to connect GVSU to the community at large and help both sides form an easy and open pathway, so that they can enjoy the mutual benefits offered by the experience each can offer the other. For example, she formed a connection with local leader Jewellynne Richardson, founder of the West Michigan Jewels of Africa. She was a special guest in April 2022, when Crystal arranged a Meet and Greet at the Sustainable Agriculture Project farm, where she shared the history of Juneteenth. Jewellynne is one of the founders of the Juneteenth downtown celebration, where Crystal runs her Sustainability Booth to give out free vegetable seedlings to the community. Jewellynne needed an intern for her organization, and she was able to connect her with an African and African American Studies student who was seeking an internship in her field of African Studies.
Crystal’s work in the community is impressive. She was awarded the West Michigan Environmental Action Council (WMEAC) Educator of the Year award in 2021, and GVSU received the community partner of the year award from them in the same year. She continued working at the Baxter Community Center while teaching until the beginning of the pandemic. She is a member of the Kent County Food Policy Council and was recently named Co-Chair. She is also a member of the Urban Agriculture Committee of the city of Grand Rapids, the Essential Needs Task Force Food and Nutrition Coalition, the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society, the Michigan Horticultural Therapy Association, and the NAACP Environmental Justice Council. She is also a certified canning instructor and ServSafe Certified by the Kent County Health Department.
The Kent County Food Policy Council (KCFPC) is a newer organization that was formed as an offshoot of the Kent County Essential Needs Task Force. Their mission is to advocate for and promote a Good Food system in Kent County. This model of food system aims to optimize the nutrition of the community at a local level. The KCFPC works with local municipalities directly to implement changes that lead to improved access to nutritional food for the local community. They also wrote a letter to the White House, to President Biden, with suggestions related to food systems and national food policy. They have secured grants to build out food educational programs in the Grand Rapids Public Schools (GRPS). Crystal consulted with Dr. Kelly Christopher, of the STEM Greenhouse, to develop the new food education curriculum that will be taught at all grade levels in GRPS, and they are working to expand to more school districts within Kent County. “Children are more susceptible to starvation and hunger when living in food deserts because they are kids,” says Crystal. “They can’t go apply for food stamps, so they suffer the most. Awareness is a huge issue, and the complexity of the problems is another obstacle that needs to be overcome.”
Throughout her various endeavors and achievements, her roots in community building and food advocacy are very evident. And her skill in forging connections and being a voice for the other is exemplary. She feels very strongly that there is no need for anyone to go without. One of her passion projects came about after those in the sustainability community reached out to her in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, wanting to show support and solidarity for the African American community as allies. The Sustainability Booth was Crystal’s idea for how they could be allies helping the community and was featured during the Juneteenth Celebration in downtown Grand Rapids. There, she hands out free vegetable seedlings supplied of the Office of Sustainability and challenges people to grow to take part in feeding themselves sustainably. “Sustainability starts with you,” she says. “Grow a tomato plant on a windowsill or on your balcony. Try growing a kale plant, and trimming it, taking those pieces, and making a salad or stir frying it with pasta. Try helping to feed yourself. Farmers do not produce enough food for every person on the earth. You should never leave something that is as important as sustaining your life completely in somebody else’s hands.”
Wende Randall is the Director of the Kent County Essential Needs Task Force and is both a peer who sits with Crystal on many committees, as well as a good friend. “Crystal is a knowledgeable and experienced leader in sustainability and food systems,” she said. “She is dedicated to educating the community, particularly young adults, and bringing both a sense of urgency and hope to emerging leaders in these systems. Crystal builds relationships to encourage collaboration, while speaking distinctly about the oppression and damage of past and current practices. Crystal’s words and actions have enabled groups large and small to understand their role in sustainability and food systems, and she has inspired people to take action toward change.”
Crystal always tries to spread awareness of how simple it really is to make a change toward sustainability. “Preserving food is also easier than most believe," she says. "Even if you do not have canning supplies, you can always freeze. It can be as simple as going to the dollar store and grabbing a box of freezer bags. You just drop the produce into boiling water for 3 minutes, which will stop the enzyme breakdown. Then take it out, put it in cold water, let it cool, pat it dry, and put it in the freezer bag. It is just that simple.”
When the pandemic began, Crystal found herself highly sought after by acquaintances and strangers alike, seeking advice on canning and preserving food and growing their own food. She has incorporated a web series project into her work with the Kent County Food Policy Council, in partnership with the NAACP Environmental Justice Council. They have released online videos about various topics, such as food, and optimizing your outdoor space. The next one will be about environmental justice. She is also hoping to publish a series of online videos that will demonstrate how to can and preserve food. She will also be giving a live demonstration during the upcoming Brooks Bash Fall Fest.
“I think all the things that I am involved with are connected. I was raised as a kid to be that bridge between community and business or entity. At GVSU, I hope to be a bridge between the students and the community.” Whether she is connecting students to internships that lead to jobs in their chosen field or sitting on a local committee being a voice for others in the community that she has formed connections and relationships with, Crystal is a tireless advocate for making the world a better place to live, now and in the future. “Crystal pours her love and sense of protection into those around her,” says Wende Randall. “She nurtures and protects those around her to bring about a stronger community.” Crystal is a valued member of the Brooks College community and we look forward to watching her continue to share her gifts to those who she works with for years to come.