For most of her youth, Cherry Steinwender had endured the indignity of life as an African American in the Jim Crow South — the rides in the back of the bus, the restrooms, and drinking fountains for Black people only, the segregated schools, the secondhand textbooks passed down by White students, the inability to try clothes in department stores, the lash of the whip in cotton fields, house cleaning that left hands raw, the stereotypes, the caricatures and negative images and words that led to self-hate.

Born in Apelousas – Louisiana where a more virulent strain of racism prevailed, Cherry’s journey has never been a path for the faint-hearted. She started working at the age of 10 years, but before that she worked during the summers with her family in Apelousas, picking cotton and making $3per day – from sunrise to sunset.

Despite a life of complete poverty, on and off welfare, despite the difference of birth, wealth and faction, Cherry believed she was different, special, and one of a kind. She never let racism defined who she was, and never let limitations others had placed on her family deter her from her dreams.

At a time when the Deep South was one of the most dangerous places in the nation for African Americans, with a line drawn in the sand for Blacks and for Whites, Cherry never fled from the battlefield to the North, and never stayed on the other side of the line forever.

Braving gunfire, tear gas, police dogs and Ku Klux Klansmen, she jumped over that line and started fighting for hope over fear. She attended public school and in 1978 was hired by a medical firm as a ‘Paper Pushers.’ For someone who never preferred leisure over work, and understood that greatness was never a given, but must be earned, she was out front and learned relentlessly how to do virtually everything in the workplace. Not long after, Cherry the doer, and the maker of things was finally recognized and promoted to a supervisory role, the first Black person in the firm to ever hold that position.

Tested by racism that steeled her resolve and proved her resilience, Cherry carried on working in various segregated work environments often obscure in her labor.

In 1989, Cherry with an endless capacity for risk, a gift for innovation and with passion and dedication, co-founded the Center for the Healing of Racism – a Houston, Texas based non-profit organization dedicated to the healing of racism through education and empowerment.

Under her leadership, the Center was profiled in the publication, One America for the 21st Century, a study of race in America commissioned by President Bill Clinton. She has also conducted intensive weekend workshops in cities across the United States.

A dauntless racial healing activist, Cherry has conducted workshops for delegations from South and Central America, Africa, South Asia, and Europe who were guests of the U.S. State Department and interested in learning about American racism. She has worked with counselors, social workers, various municipal agencies, faith-based groups, corporate America, (which includes Shell Oil Company), as well as students from elementary through college and university levels.

She co-authored Dialogue: Racism, a seminar that examines the history and sociological phenomenon of racism in the United States. She is the author of Bread is A Simple Food, Teaching Children about Cultures.

Cherry served on the Houston Community College Racial Awareness Program (RAP), a task force established to engender a greater understanding of the problem of racism within the campus community, the Advisory Board of the Center for Principle Leadership, and the Advisory Board of North America College and Advisory Council of the Office of Reconciliation Ministries. Cherry is highly involved in working with students in the University of Houston Internship program and Houston Community College Student Service-Learning Program. She is also on the North America University Advisory Board.

She has been a guest on several television and radio talk shows locally, nationally, and internationally, and has been interviewed for feature articles in area newspapers and magazines.

Despite the many gains of the racial healing movement, Cherry reflected with anguish on what she saw as the work that remained left to be done. This is why she is committed to give an unmatched impetus for the construction of a United Nations Colonization Memorial to commemorate victims of colonization - a dark period of racial terrorism in our past that though most people would rather forget, casts a shadow across the world and compromise our commitment to reconciliation, racial and healing.

Among her most cherished awards, Cherry received the 2013 Gandhi, King, Ikeda: A Legacy of Building Peace Award, which is given to a person who works to further the ideal of world peace, and the 2013 Diversity Champion Award.