Since its founding in 2001, the Chicago non-profit Free Spirit Media has provided video production training and hands-on experience to Black and Latinx high schoolers and young adults on the city’s West and South Sides.
Last week, citing concerns that include allegations of racism and tokenism, an open letter signed by program alumni and former employees called for the termination of Free Spirit Media’s founder and executive director Jeff McCarter.
“This letter was created because too many people have had to question their worth as workers, as artists, and as human beings because of Jeff McCarter,” the open letter reads, in part: “This letter was created because too many people were afraid to speak out when he caused harm in the past.”
Stacey Bolton, president of the Free Spirit Media Board of directors, informed the Tribune that McCarter was placed on paid administrative leave last week.
One of the allegations about McCarter put forth in the letter pertains to a comment he made to a Latinx employee that was witnessed by Melissa Bryan, who worked at Free Spirit Media from 2009 to 2014 as the director of programs.
According to Bryan, McCarter was “sitting casually at a desk and mid-conversation asked (the employee), ‘So you’re like a coconut?'”
Bryan said, “I don’t know if she registered the question or was shocked, but her lack of response led him to clarify: ‘You know, like brown on the outside, white on the inside.’ … For a person who has been working and living in communities of color for as long as Jeff has, to ask such a distinctly racist question of someone working in his organization is shocking.”
When reached by the Tribune for comment about the allegations outlined in the letter, McCarter responded: “Thank you for reaching out to me, however while this is an ongoing and unresolved situation, I have been advised to not speak with outside parties including the media. Again, I thank you for your interest.”
The son of John McCarter, the former president and CEO of the Field Museum, McCarter’s biography on the Free Spirit Media website mentions his work on “feature films directed by Steven Soderbergh and Ron Howard,” which IMDb lists as intern or production assistant credits.
While Free Spirit Media may not be a household name, it has been the beneficiary of at least one sizable grant. In 2018, the organization received $650,000 from the MacArthur Foundation, which said in a statement, “We take very seriously the allegations that he might have misused his power or treated staff unfairly.”
Bolton, the president of Free Spirit Media’s board of directors, told the Tribune that he and fellow board members learned about the “highly concerning statements” involving McCarter on June 22. The board then put McCarter on administrative leave and launched an investigation to evaluate the statements.
“As Board President, I reached out to the individuals who raised these concerns, and we had a very productive dialogue yesterday. Their perspectives will be part of our formal investigation.”
One of the concerns raised in the letter is the issue of tokenism. Rachel Jones worked at Free Spirit Media from 2015 to 2018 and was an instructor for the video journalism program called Free Spirit Media News.
“The point was to help high school students tell their own stories instead of having the news speak for them because they’re able to speak for themselves,” she said in an interview with the Tribune.
In the open letter Jones alleges that McCarter “specifically made several students uncomfortable by asking them to pose in photos with him, when they don’t really know him. Some of those photos end up on Jeff’s personal social media, to the discomfort of the students.”
Kenyetta Johnson is an alumni of the program and former intern. In the letter, she describes being asked to produce a video for an upcoming fundraiser, only to find herself “excluded from a majority of the production meetings held by Jeff and other executive leaders.”
She asked that McCarter “step back and let me do my job, which was met with a passive aggressive email from him stating how he was both the executive producer and the client in this project (so his opinion mattered more over mine) and would later go on to say that the reason he was doing all of this was because he didn’t have ‘complete confidence’ in my ability to do my job.”
Jazz Williams worked at Free Spirit Media from 2012 to 2016 and was one of the people in charge of the HoopsHIGH program, which provides “in-depth instruction and hands-on experience in the art of sports broadcasting,” per the organization’s website.
A concern Williams raised occurred at an event held at the HoopsHIGH headquarters, at North Lawndale College Prep, that Williams attended.
“Jeff is standing next to a young person,” Williams said, “and his guests are in a semi-circle in front of him and he says, ‘I really want to thank you all for being brave enough to come to the West Side.’ These were all white people and they’re all nodding and enjoying that appreciation and gratitude. And I’m looking at the young person, who’s not really sure how to process this because this is her neighborhood; this is her home. I felt like that was extremely racist. It was race-baiting.”
Williams also described attending a panel at McCarter’s direction. When a white woman reached out and touched Williams’ hair, “there was never any support from Jeff to help establish any boundaries. What that woman did was not acceptable but I did not feel like I was in a place to tell this funder, ‘Yo, don’t touch me.’ I feel like Jeff should have.”
“This moment has opened a lot of people’s eyes to fake allyship and what that looks like,” said program alumni Terrence Thompson about the momentum of recent Black Lives Matters protests that has helped to encourage alumni and former employees to come forward and talk about their experiences.
“Racism can be so hard to call out and challenge when it’s not someone in a KKK robe or using the n-word,” said former staffer Jones, “but it’s clear in the way they wield power and the way they interact with others.”
