Viola Davis and husband Julius Tennon announce Rhode Island-based foundation

Central Falls High School alumna and legendary Rhode Islander Viola Davis was back in her home state last month, this time to announce a new foundation alongside her husband, actor Julius Tennon.

The Davis/Tennon foundation will “foster connections between individuals and community-based organizations across Rhode Island to address critical social issues,” including empowering women, preventing domestic violence, enhancing after-school opportunities and addressing housing challenges, according to an announcement. The couple expects their annual support to reach nearly $1 million in Central Falls and beyond.

“The birth of the Davis/Tennon Foundation started with the realization that the gift of success is the ability to give back,” Davis says in a statement.

“I grew up in Central Falls. It is the place I call home, and it is where my dreams took shape, and it also carries memories of the brutal aspects of poverty. Within that community holds so many people who have the vision, ability, and talent to shift the world, and within me is the ability to give them the tools to do so. More than awards, it is my legacy.”

The couple made the announcement during the Segue Institute for Learning’s fifteenth anniversary celebration on Oct. 15. Angelo Garcia, founder of Segue and its affiliated Legacy High School, says the couple has long been supporters of the charter school. Davis and Tennon named Garcia to serve as the new foundation’s first chair.

Garcia spoke with Rhode Island Monthly this week about his long friendship with Davis and goals in running the new organization.

 

This is such an exciting announcement!

We are very excited as well. We have been in the works almost a year on this before the announcement. It’s been really exciting, and I’m a Libra, so I have a big mouth. I couldn’t talk to people about it for awhile until we got some things in order. But it’s very, very exciting.

 

Tell us about your relationship with Viola and Julius. How long have you known them? 

I was twelve, and I’m fifty-seven now, when I first met Viola. We were both growing up here in the city. We’ve just been super long friends, and we immediately took a drawing to each other because we were one of the few families that looked different in our community back in the day, here in Central Falls. They were one of the first African American families here, we were one of the first Puerto Rican families here. And we just connected even though she’s a year-plus older than me. We connected in school and we became friends. We got involved in theater at school and then youth theater in the community, and we have just stayed close friends throughout. We have been connected through trials and tribulations of both of our families, and she’s just a phenomenal human being. And of course, meeting Julius when they first started being together and then getting married — and so, I’ve been a part of all of that with them.

 

That’s amazing. It’s so cool to talk to someone who knew her growing up in Central Falls. 

It’s so interesting because when I talk to her now, we don’t talk about George Clooney or anybody else that’s really famous and important. We talk more about raising kids and our families and spouses and partners and paying bills, and that kind of stuff.

 

How long has the idea for this foundation been kicking around?

We started having conversations, I would say, in December of last year. Viola was working with an agency in California who was doing some work with her about setting up a foundation. I know it’s something that her and Julius have had on their minds for a while. Viola has always been generous to Central Falls, as you may know, but I think she wants to formalize it a little bit more and be a little bit more intentional about the support she’s offering.

I think both of us, having grown up here, having had issues in our families of substance abuse and domestic violence — we’re sort of kindred spirits that way. I think that for us, the more we talked about it, the more we both got jazzed and we were like, OK, let’s do something. And then at first she was like, ‘Can you help me find someone?’ And then Julius was like, ‘Why don’t you do it?’ And I said, ‘Hold on, I’m running a school. I’m doing a whole bunch of other things.’ The plan is to get this off the ground, really give it some roots in the city, find the space for it, and then see what the next stage of evolution is.

 

Will the foundation be focused on Central Falls? 

Viola’s very fortunate that she recognizes the support that she’s gotten growing up, even after the fact, in her family. There is a strong focus in Central Falls, but there’s also a lot of agencies in Providence and the Blackstone Valley that I know that she wants to engage with.

 

What kind of issues will the foundation focus on? 

The foundation’s philosophy is just simple in nature. Making connections, removing obstacles. That’s it. We’re not a direct service foundation, we’re a facilitator of conversations. Looking at things that are near and dear to Viola and Julius — opportunities for single moms, economic development, education. For them, addressing issues of substance abuse and domestic violence. Viola feels strongly that after-school programs and activities for kids were her lifeline while she was growing up, as they were mine as well. So creating spaces for kids that are safe and productive and help them grow and develop. And then I know that she really also has interest in helping to develop the economy of our community. And so what does that look like by way of helping our community be a thriving community? We both are of the mindset that healthy families and healthy parents promulgate healthy ideals and philosophies and practices.

 

Have you worked out any arrangements with recipients yet? 

I’ve heard from several organizations already who have reached out to me, and I’m excited that folks are interested in being a part of conversation. One of the things that’s really important is that we’re looking to partner with organizations who are not looking to reinvent the wheel. There are some great organizations already doing some great work, and how do we support them by creating a network, by making connections, creating access for families to access those supports?

Rhode Island is small. I’ve been in the game for almost forty years now, and I can tell you that there’s not very much under the sun that’s new by way of, hey, let’s work together. I just think that COVID kind of threw a monkey wrench and people all went into their own corners, and now it’s trying to see that we need to come back to center and work smarter, not harder, and convene folks and share resources. And so the foundation has an ideology that it’s not just about coming to the table seeking support, but it’s also bringing your checkbook, bringing your ideas, bringing your collaborative spirit, because that’s the way we can serve more people for a longer period of time.

 

What are you offering to organizations you’re looking to partner with? 

The goal is to help organizations identify where there are gaps in some of the services that they provide. A perfect example is that a lot of money that was made available during the pandemic is now gone. We’ve created yet again a system of people who are reliant on some sort of support or supplement or services. And so, we are thinking long term. I use our food pantry as an example. It’s great that we have commodities and food available to families, but what are we doing to really look at folks who are disenfranchised from a system? What is the root cause when they cannot access healthy food on a regular basis? The goal of the foundation is to offer some financial support, but also have organizations look at how we’re building the capacity of individuals and families. It’s not that we’re going to be the ones offering counseling, but we can help a family or an individual look for counseling through organization X, and what are the barriers for that person not being able to access those? Is it transportation? Is it language? Is it a number of things? I think that for us it’s also about helping to connect the dots.

 

Does this mean that we’ll be seeing more of Viola in Rhode Island? 

I think it does. She was just here a couple of weeks ago for our gala, and I have seen her a couple of times over the summer. You know, my goal is to get her here a little bit.

 

She still has a lot of family in the area as well, right? I know her sister was working in Central Falls.

She has family in the area and she’s very rooted in that. She is excited. And the thing about it is that in talking to both her and Julius, we just don’t want to be another — ‘Here, we’re going to write a check and that’s going to help us sleep at night.’ We really want to start looking at some real causes for why folks are not accessing some supports and services. And you know, how can we do that? An interesting thing is that I’m developing the board of the foundation. We’re looking for folks. We’re trying to develop a board, a voluntary board of people, but we’re also looking to develop a leadership academy for parents who can help us make some decisions as to where this money goes.

Rhode Island is a service state, and it is a group of very well-intended people, but oftentimes we’re talking about people without them. And we’re making decisions that are based on being two or three times removed from what’s actually happening in some of the homes in our urban core. I’m actually writing support grants to this foundation to help me develop a cadre of parents who we want to train — we want to bring on board to help make those decisions about how do we support organizations? How do we monitor that support? Because we don’t want there to be a top-heavy administrative foundation. We want to get as much money into the streets as possible.

 

Where would you personally like to see the funds directed in Central Falls? 

I’ve been around a long time. I ask questions a lot of people like, ‘Why do you have an after-school program, and you have an after-school program, and you have an after-school program?’ Why can’t we start thinking about working together? I would really like to see us develop a stronger network of providers that could address a lot of what folks are doing sort of in a fragmented way. But bringing people together by way of using our public buildings after hours, creating safe spaces for kids at night, helping develop the economy of our community, helping parents become a little bit savvier around, ‘Hey, you’re paying $1,200 for a rented apartment with just two rooms? That’s a mortgage. Did you know you can get a house?’ How do we do that? That sort of thing. I think a lot of it is about education and making people aware.

 

Is there anything else that you want people to know about the foundation?

We’re looking for all walks of life to be a part of the dialogue. It’s so important. Those who work in frontline situations, whether it be in shelters or food pantries or neighborhood clinics — they know the families, they see them every single day. So if you can’t get directly involved, offer some thoughts, ideas, suggestions. We’ll be holding a couple of public forums after the first of the year so folks can offer their ideas as well.

 

I love how focused you are on getting people involved in the decisions that are going to affect them. It was a very telling decision on their part that they didn’t bring someone from Hollywood out who was going to come and run this.

I was incredibly humbled that they had the faith in me to do this work. I trust and love them both tremendously, and I know that they have a lot of confidence. But they’re also doing a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff. They have offered me access to their press people, to their finance people. They could very easily just send us a check. I’m really excited about it, and we hope that this is the start of bigger conversations and maybe somewhere along the way we can create a little bit more organized system for the Blackstone Valley or Central Falls.

 

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

 

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