Kira Hudson Banks, PhD, is recognized with this APA Citizen Psychologist Presidential Citation for being a catalyst for transformation, learning and action in the aftermath of the Ferguson, Missouri protests and unrest in 2014 and beyond, and for now being a leader in racial equity in the St. Louis region.
Banks’s activities as a Citizen Psychologist began with a call from City Garden Montessori Charter School to facilitate discussions with the administrative team to help them in understanding racism and how it manifests in that school. This call led Banks from preparing that school to commit to becoming an anti-biased, anti-racist institution to later expanding her efforts by helping the larger community in Ferguson. Banks initially served her community during the unrest in various capacities, such as a protest march marshal, de-escalator and mental health crisis supporter. She organized ad hoc counseling sessions and safe spaces for activists and provided critical roles during the protests, such as jail support, legal observation and driving people safely from one place to another. Banks and her husband housed two activists for several weeks, when they were receiving death threats and when their home had been ransacked.
Banks subsequently served as a Racial Equity consultant for the Ferguson Commission (2015) and as the Racial Equity Catalyst (2016-17) for Forward Through Ferguson, the entity developed to further the calls to action of the commission. At Forward Through Ferguson, she developed several frameworks and documents that have been foundational in building a community of thinkers towards racial equity. She also launched a community of practice called the Racial Equity Roundtable, which brings together executives and leaders from the region to share lessons learned and to get real-time feedback on how they are implementing a racial equity lens. Her work with the Ferguson Commission and Forward Through Ferguson has been foundational in taking theory into action. Banks has brought her knowledge and research on the effects of discrimination, the impact of unconscious bias on decision-making, and the importance of advancing both systems and individual-level solutions, to bear in advancing the greater Ferguson community.