Jacory Bernard ‘21 approaches education the way some people approach ministry, with a deep sense of responsibility to the people in front of him.

A Morehouse College alumnus and staff member in the Office of Admissions, Bernard operates at the intersection of mentorship, storytelling, and institutional mission. Before joining Morehouse’s admissions team, he worked as a classroom teacher. Today, he also serves as a curriculum developer and education consultant, helping schools and organizations rethink how young people, particularly Black students, experience learning.

Those overlapping roles shape how Bernard participates in screenings of Belonging Beyond Brown (BBB), the documentary directed by Dr. Nina Gilbert, examining the history and unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education. As an educator, admissions officer, and 2021 alumnus, Bernard sees the film as a historical narrative and a tool for reflection and action.

In a conversation after Belonging Beyond Brown’s screening at the Pan African Film Festival in Culver City, California, Jacory reflects on the documentary’s power across communities.

“I told Dr. Gilbert last night, you know, we use the phrase ‘call to action’ as a means of an actionable response that people can provide for their inspiration,” Bernard says. “But I do feel like this [documentary] is an actual call to action.”

For Bernard, the documentary forces audiences to confront an uncomfortable reality: the distance between the promises of educational equality and the experiences many students still face.

“The film itself serves as a call for people to be very aware and cognizant of how close our history is to us,” he explains. “It didn’t happen that long ago, yet the revolution that was of that time is now further and further away from us.”

Bernard has attended several screenings of the film, including a particularly impactful one through Jacks in the House, a summer leadership program for young men affiliated with Jack and Jill of America. As program director, he helped organize a screening for about 60 students participating in the residential program.

The conversation that followed left a lasting impression.

“The guys actually rated that session as one of the top three sessions of the experience,” Bernard recalls.

What struck him most were the students’ reflections. Many described experiences in schools where they felt unseen or unsupported, stories that echoed the documentary’s themes.

“There were several students who expressed that they felt like [they didn’t belong] in their spaces at school,” he says.

One student shared that he had never felt truly recognized until joining the summer program, where he was surrounded by peers who looked like him and shared similar experiences.

For Bernard, moments like that reveal how persistent the documentary’s themes remain.

“A lot of people are still experiencing inequities, discrimination, hate, and prejudice in our educational spaces,” he says.

Before joining Morehouse’s admissions team, Bernard saw those realities firsthand as a teacher at Parklane Elementary School in East Point, Georgia, a Title I school often labeled as failing by state metrics. But Bernard remembers something different: a community of teachers committed to their students’ growth and dignity.

“When I taught there, those children knew that they were loved every single day,” he says.

Under those conditions, the school’s students consistently demonstrated measurable academic growth, even without the resources available in more affluent districts. For Bernard, the experience reinforced a lesson echoed throughout Belonging Beyond Brown: relationships and representation often matter as much as infrastructure.

Today, Bernard brings that same philosophy to his work in admissions.

In conversations with prospective students, many of whom are navigating school environments where they feel isolated, he often speaks about Morehouse as a space where belonging is intentional.

“Students are looking for places to belong,” he says. “They’re looking for safe havens where they can develop.”

Previously, prestige and rankings once drove college decisions, but Bernard says he increasingly sees young people prioritizing something different: community.

That community personifies itself across various cities in which Bernard has joined our Belonging Beyond Brown screenings, often holding official and unofficial recruitment sessions for interested or admitted Morehouse prospective students. .

In Chicago, at BBB’s screening with Pastor Otis Moss III and Trinity United Church of Christ, Bernard held an impromptu post-screening Q&A session for attendees.

In Los Angeles, after BBB’s screening at the Pan African Film Festival, Bernard coordinated an admitted students and parents night at Lincoln Memorial Church in Crenshaw, in partnership with the Association of Los Angeles Morehouse Parents. This event included a dinner, an information session about Morehouse, and a Morehouse experience panel featuring current students, alumni, and staff. Robust individual conversations continued into the night after the panel discussion.

“I think students are now seeking a more true experience,” he explains.

That search for belonging often leads them toward historically Black colleges and universities.

Bernard describes Morehouse as a rare environment, one where students can grow without constantly defending their identity.

“Morehouse is like a Wakanda,” he says.

“Where students can escape the harm of the world for four years and be protected.”

But Bernard’s work extends beyond recruitment. Through his education consulting practice, Roots Redefined, he develops curricula that center representation, critical thinking, and cultural awareness. The goal, he says, is not simply to add diversity to textbooks, but to reshape how students understand themselves and their histories.

“It is the job of the teacher to source and find resources that meet the needs of diverse populations,” he explains.

At its core, Bernard sees education as a form of liberation. Liberation, or freedom, resonates deeply with the documentary he continues to champion.

“The work that we do is a liberatory practice,” he says.

Through screenings, conversations, and mentorship, Bernard believes the film helps audiences confront both the past and the present, and imagine what a more equitable future might look like.

And for the students he meets along the way, the message is simple: belonging is something institutions and people must actively create.