Envisioning Justice Hub Partner Spotlight - Dr. Treasure Shields Redmond

Dr. Treasure Shields Redmond began working with Illinois Humanities over a decade ago through the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau program. She traveled across Illinois singing freedom songs and presenting on the history of voting rights in the Deep South. Dr. Redmond also published a book in 2015, chop: a collection of kwansabas for fannie lou hamer, focused on the noted civil rights activist.  

Dr. Redmond returned to Mississippi to attend Jackson State University, one of the nation’s top HBCUs. While there, she joined a band which produced an independent record and helped found MADDRAMA, a nationally recognized theater troupe still around today. 

“I'm always creating, and I'm always trying to be around creative people,” said Dr. Redmond.  

She then spent a decade in Memphis as a public-school teacher and earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Memphis. “It was oftentimes an unpleasant experience because the issues and characters that populated my work were often treated as secondary or not rigorous enough or not poetic enough,” reflected Dr. Redmond. 

After only having one African American creative writing teacher throughout her graduate career, one of the most important moments in her work and journey was being selected to participate in a prestigious Cave Canem poetry retreat and working with great poets like Sonia Sanchez, Michael S. Harper, and Cornelius Eady.  

Dr. Redmond eventually moved to Illinois in 2009, returning to the East St. Louis area where she would begin her next creative adventure. Sound, especially the charming speech and idiom of the Black community, has always been central to Dr. Redmond’s work and writing.  

“I've always loved to sit at the feet of elders and hear people tell stories, and it grew into a realization that I could be an archivist. I could collect and preserve these stories.” 

She founded The Community Archive as a nonprofit to intentionally formalize archival work, especially for her local community. Dr. Redmond takes a more conversational approach during interviews, which leads to more forthcoming and revealing collections. She was even able to have radically honest and important conversations with her father through the podcast series The Memoir My Dad Wouldn’t Write. 

The Community Archive’s signature project is collecting the stories of descendants of survivors of the 1917 East St. Louis race riot massacre.  

Located in St. Clair County, the city of East St. Louis sits directly across the Mississippi River just east of St. Louis, Missouri. What was once a booming industrial ‘All-American City’ and Midwest hub through the mid 1900s quickly declined in population and industry. 

“East St. Louis is one of those places, like a lot of places in the Midwest and throughout the country, that was abandoned by industry,” said Dr. Redmond. “So, the illegal economy rushed in to fill that gap, plus the anti-Black racism in the U.S. has combined to make it a place that is very severely impacted by mass incarceration.” 

As an artist, educator, and cultural and arts organizer, Dr. Redmond reconnected with Illinois Humanities in more recent years through the Envisioning Justice program after seeing a call for art expressing the effects of the carceral system. She became interested after seeing it offered opportunities for individuals who are justice-impacted and touched on a conversation that aligned with her politics and ethos.  

Dr. Redmond attended and read poetry at the first annual Envisioning Justice Statewide Convening in Springfield in 2022 and connected with other justice-impacted artists. Following the convening, she helped organize a program in partnership with Illinois Humanities that featured The House of Mary, a place for women returning from incarceration offering housing and other supportive services in East St. Louis.

“If you incarcerate a woman, you've incarcerated the family in many ways because often times, they're the primary caregiver for children and elders so the reach is devastating and far,” she said.  

The event at the Sunshine Cultural Arts Center offered East St. Louis residents the opportunity to discuss their needs and aspirations along with resources available in the area such as Mary’s House.  

Natasha Patterson, Founder of The House of Mary, is a member of the East Side Arts Collective, which Dr. Redmond convened. “It’s a multidisciplinary convening of artists. We have painters, actors, documentarians, writers, and so forth, who do all kinds of work individually and collectively.”  

In 2024, Dr. Redmond was one of six individuals and organizations selected as an Envisioning Justice Community Hub Partner, with the goal of engaging more Illinoisans in using the arts and humanities to address the impacts of mass incarceration.  

In 2025, ESAC hosted A Community Conversation: Women's Paths from Prison to Community. The event was well attended and the panel enabled justice-impacted women to discuss their experiences and share resources and opportunities available in the community.  

Currently, the Hub and ESAC are working on a mural project in East St. Louis reflecting on the country’s upcoming 250th anniversary and Illinois’ historical connection not having been a state 250 years ago. Jaye Willis, Executive Director of the East St. Louis Historical Society, is leading the project with local artists Allena Marie Brazier, Jennifer Chike, and Edna Patterson-Petty.  

Dr. Redmond is excited for what the mural will unpack. “As an all-Black collective, what does a place founded on genocide and erasure and commemorating its founding mean and how can that be properly shown visually?”  

The mural will be located on a residential building operated by the Mt. Sinai Development Corporation. It will officially be unveiled at an event on August 29, 2026. 

This month, the Hub will host a live interpretation and historic tour by scholars, historians, and local community members reenacting the 1917 East St. Louis race riot massacre at historic sites across the city.  

Dr. Redmond looks forward to continuing to work with people who listen and will stick around to find ways to meet the needs of the community.