By Richard L. Gaw

Staff Writer

When LaNisha Cassell became the executive director of Voices Underground this past October, she was leaving a 20-year career Iowa, where for the last nine years she had been the executive director of the African American Museum of Iowa. Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Prince Georges County, Md., she returns to the East Coast to lead an organization that has become a county-wide leader in scholarly research, creative partnerships, public experiences and historical memorialization of African American history. Recently, Cassell met with the Chester County Press to talk about the foundational work of the agency, the power of storytelling and the continuing journey toward racial healing.

Chester County Press: You were raised in Washington, D.C., long considered an incubator for the nation’s ideas and ideals. How did the city itself serve as an outdoor classroom as you developed your principles, and who were among those in your young life who helped guide you toward those principles?

Cassell: I was born in Washington, D.C. and I was raised in Prince Georges County, Maryland but with the Metro and access to the city it became a major part of my upbringing. My father, Robert Reese worked in D.C., my mother, Alexis Smith worked at The Pentagon, so I was frequently on the Metro and all my field trips were to museums throughout the city. One of the most impactful experiences I had happened after I graduated from college, when I worked for then councilwoman Dorothy F. Bailey for the Prince Georges County Council. I was her constituent services aide and legislative aide for several years. I learned how to relate and connect with people there. 

The part of my career I have enjoyed the most is being able to engage with people, and the meat and potatoes of running an agency such as Voices Underground is getting to know people and their philanthropic passions and endeavors.  I saw my mother go to work every day at the Department of Defense. She had a great work ethic. My father worked for many years in the cosmetology industry, and I saw him engage with people. Together with Ms. Bailey and others in my community, my parents shaped my perspective in understanding the needs of people.

After nine years as the executive director of the African American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids, you left your position this past October and moved with your family to Pennsylvania. What drew you back East and toward Voices Underground? Take me back to the initial spark that told you, “I want to be there?”

Over the past two and a half years, I was involved in the capital campaign for the renovation of the Museum. During the campaign, my campaign chairman encouraged me to write down some personal goals. The goals included writing a book, moving to a region with more racial diversity and moving back to the East Coast to be closer to family. At the time, I told myself that I would not start actively searching for a new career until ten years had passed at the Museum. A family member sent me the job posting for the Voices Underground position and I thought, “I can do this, and it’s on the East Coast.” While there was some hesitation in leaving a museum and community that I had grown to love, I knew it was a great opportunity.

When I read the mission and the vision of Voices Underground and after meeting with Mike Bontrager (founder of Square Roots Collective) and Greg Thompson (co-founder of Voices Underground) and representatives from SRC’s other social enterprises, what I learned really resonated with me. I saw that becoming the executive director of Voices Underground would be much bigger than merely accepting this as a new challenge. I saw it as an opportunity to bring my skills and talents to an amazing mission. 

What were you most proud of during your tenure at the African American Museum of Iowa?

The obvious answer would have to be the renovation project we undertook for the Museum. We had a successful $5 million capital campaign; we negotiated with the City of Cedar Rapids, and we came out on the other side with a beautiful new building. What I am truly most proud of were the changes that occurred for me, my team and the community that we were able to engage with for almost ten years. I became more confident, more transparent and more willing to take risks, and as a result, developed a meaningful internal culture with the team and external relationships with the Museum’s donors and patrons.

At the core of its mission, Voices Underground believes that community healing begins with careful listening, deliberate collaboration, personal transformation, truthful storytelling and creative excellence. As you and your colleagues begin 2025, where will we see evidence of that mission throughout Chester County?

We are developing the concept of creating a memorial that will tell the full stories of the Underground Railroad, including Black Abolitionists, the Freedom Seekers, the Quakers and the actual passage between being enslaved to becoming free. That is a long process that continues to develop concepts and designs, but what’s more immediate is our mission to become more illuminated, not just in Kennett Square but throughout Chester County and beyond. We will be scheduling regular programming throughout the county in collaboration with other organizations that are here doing the hard work of bringing people together.

Our planned film series and guest lecturers and panel discussions will help showcase why we are here and what we do to promote racial healing through storytelling. 

To truly illuminate the long story of the African American experience – to tell the absolute truth of it, unblemished – is to be courageous enough to talk about the pain and suffering of it, but for a lot of people – of all races and creeds -- stepping into that pain is way too much to bear. How does Voices Underground tell these stories not to point fingers of blame, but to create opportunities for healing?

I think it becomes our responsibility to meet people where they are, and it happens one person at a time. It is hard to make an impression on a large group of people and get somebody to resonate with what you’re trying to say, but when you talk one-on-one or in small groups, it becomes more of a conversation and less of a speech. 

When we can impact one person, hopefully they will take that message back to their friends and their family and their network and create a ripple effect. When we resonate with each other on a personal level it carries much more impact than what we do on a general scale. 

Voices Underground holds “Secret Supper” events throughout the year, and they are intimate opportunities that encourage engagement through storytelling and food. It’s a superb method of being able to tell stories, creating safe spaces to heal and meeting people where they are.

The work of Voices Underground is, in essence, the development of a voice, but it needs to be used for it to eventually become strong. Among the loudest voices in the organization is also one of its softest. Talk about the passion that Greg Thompson continues to bring to the mission of Voices Underground.

Greg is an amazing storyteller and is very passionate about what he brings to Voices Underground and the national understanding of the untold stories of the Underground Railroad. Listening to him during my interview sealed the deal for me that Voices Underground was where I needed to be. He is unafraid, which is necessary with missions like ours.

Greg inspires me to develop an approach that resonates within our community and make an impact in this space of healing through storytelling. Who wouldn’t want to be part of something so life-changing?

How will Voices Underground continue to find new “voice vessels” who will take the gavel and lead it into the future? 

When you talk about empowering people, I am all about collaborations and we do that through storytelling and pulling people in. One of the things I would love to be a part of is attracting more changemakers and influencers who have the capacity and resources to make a difference, not only in Kennett Square and Chester County but throughout the country and the world.

I am hoping that we never exhaust the list of those changemakers and influencers, and that we find and launch those new voices.  

Whenever I am in Washington, D.C., I make a point to visit the Lincoln Memorial and stand at the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. How does the brilliance and hope he expressed in that address overlap with the continuing mission of Voices Underground?

The summation of his speech resonates deeply with Voices Underground’s mission to encourage racial healing – to get the members of the human race to join hands. I memorized the speech when I was a child, but I recently reread the speech, and in it, Dr. King talked about our destinies, our time together and the fact that we cannot walk alone. Voices Underground brings people together through storytelling in order to hear those stories and bring understanding and healing. 

What Dr. King loved and stood for was to bring races and people together and I believe wholeheartedly that Voices Underground will continue to do that in ways that cultivate the very same principle. It’s about being unafraid to listen, asking hard questions, standing your ground, turning the other cheek when necessary and expressing forgiveness. It’s about extending grace.

Does Voices Underground have the foundation to become a national leader in the narrative of race relations? 

I would love to see that happen and I believe we can. We have the historic fortitude in Chester County to help make that happen. We have the leadership of Voices Underground along with our partners such as Lincoln University and Longwood Gardens and Square Roots Collective to be able to push our message to larger platforms. 

When I began my position in October, my team gave me a list of 100 organizations to connect with. I am a quarter of the way through that list, and it has been – and will continue to be – that one-on-one conversation that I believe will not only bring in resources but a network, and every one of those networks has its own network. 

In a short amount of time, we can begin to have a larger visibility outside of Chester County. I see a social media presence. I see a podcast in the future and regular posts of how we are engaging. The larger our footprints, the more people we will be able to bring along with us. 

Let’s finish by asking you to paint your own vision of the hope that you have for the future of America’s discourse on race. Here are your brushes and here is your paint.

I would like to make my brushes paint honesty, acknowledgement and understanding, and while I believe that we can continue to make great strides, we cannot do that until we reckon with our history and our present. I want those brushes to paint a picture colored with truth, integrity, forgiveness and hope. 

When we meet people where they are, we can become allies and begin to tell the stories that bring hope.

To learn more about Voices Underground, visit www.voicesunderground.com.

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].