Austin 360
After her daughter Marley started 1,000 Black Girl Books to find and support books that Black girls could identify with, Janice Johnson Dias found herself being strongly encouraged by her 16-year-old daughter to write a book about how to raise a daughter like Marley.
Dias, who is an associate professor of sociology at John Jay College in New York, is the co-founder of Grassroots Community Foundation. Every year Grassroots holds a summer camp for girls and their parents to try to empower girls and their caregivers.
She is 10 years into the work of Grassroots, but it was the work Marley was doing that kept prompting people to ask Dias about how Marley came to be the change-maker that she is.