By Darren Martin Jr.

“18 steps,” Bernard Gilbert ‘12 says, recalling the story that would eventually anchor his poem, an act of witness as much as it is of craft.

The number came to him in proximity to history: seated in a room in New Orleans, listening as Leona Tate, one of the first Black students to integrate public schools in the South, narrated a memory that has refused to loosen its grip across decades. “She said she would count ’em–18 steps,” he recalls. The detail struck him as anecdote and architecture, a way into a story too large to hold all at once.

Long before “18 Steps” took shape, Bernard was already working in language. “I had always written poetry… as early as I can remember,” he says. At Morehouse College, that instinct deepened in community. After stepping away from football, he found his way into the Atlanta University Center Drama Ministry, where writing and performance were shared practices. “We used to get together and just write together and read each other poetry together,” he says. The work moved through rooms filled with peers, shaped in real time, tested aloud.

His studies in marketing and business administration expanded that practice rather than redirecting it. Advertising introduced him to structure, to the discipline of shaping an idea and delivering it with clarity. During a summer internship at Ogilvy & Mather in 2011, he found himself drawn to the performative edges of the work. “Doing research and then pitching what we discovered… I really enjoyed that part of it,” he says. The presentations, the translation of insight into something that could move an audience, felt familiar.

The experience also clarified what he already understood about himself. “It just showed me… where my true passions lie… and it was with performing,” he says. A conversation with a senior executive reinforced that clarity. When Bernard shared his goal of becoming an actor, the response was direct. “You should just do that then,” he says the executive told him, adding that he would “give up the corner office… to go back and do what I really wanted to do.”

Graduate School training in acting followed after his graduation from Morehouse in 2012, offering language and rigor to a practice he had been building for years. In addition to technique, what stayed with him most was the underlying philosophy. “It’s a lot of emotional intelligence that we’re learning… a lot of empathy training,” he says. Listening became central. So did imagination, the ability to hold another person’s experience without collapsing it into his own.

That orientation shaped how “18 Steps” came together. The poem was an offering. “Let me think about what I could contribute,” he remembers thinking as Belonging Beyond Brown took form. Writing was the clearest way in. The film’s making was something he had witnessed up close, in fragments and in full, shaped by the hand of Dr. Gilbert, his mother. The proximity made the collaboration even more effective.

The structure emerged when he was in the room, listening to Leona Tate’s testimony during filming in New Orleans, Louisiana. The steps became both literal and symbolic, a way to trace movement through a moment that continues to reverberate. “I was like, I’m about to… use these 18 steps,” he says. The writing itself came quickly. “Probably just like in a day, a night,” he recalls, though he continued refining the piece as it moved toward performance.

Even in its speed, the work carried a clear boundary. “It feels like a story I’ve written for this… it’s a poem that Dr. Tate, she lived,” he says. The responsibility was to avoid speaking over the story and rather focus on shaping a form that could hold it.

Filming the piece introduced a different kind of discipline. Delivering the entire poem cleanly, in sequence, required a level of memorization and collaboration with pianist Raquan Strickland ‘27. “Trying to get the whole piece out clean, that was difficult,” he says. The challenge was technical, but the intention remained the same: to do the story justice.

His contribution to the film extended beyond the poem itself. During production, Bernard also lent his face and physical presence for a photographic mockup that would later become the hand-illustrated key art of Belonging Beyond Brown. The image, which anchors the film’s visual identity, carries the same sense of embodiment that defines his performance – an offering of self in service of a larger narrative.

Outside of the film, Bernard’s work has expanded into teaching, particularly with adults. What began as an extension of his acting practice has become a space where performance and personal development meet. “When I realized how much joy I get from teaching acting, especially to adults… it’s more exciting when I see that light click in somebody’s eyes,” he says. The classroom, in this sense, becomes less about structure and more about transformation. Grounded in the principles of acting, his approach invites people to engage more fully with themselves and others. “It’s a lot of emotional intelligence that we’re learning… it’s a lot of empathy training,” he explains, pointing to listening and imagination as essential tools that extend well beyond the stage. The same tools that shape performance shape how people understand themselves and one another.

That sensibility carries into what he hopes audiences take from Belonging Beyond Brown. The film asks a question that unsettles easy narratives about desegregation. Bernard is less concerned with prescribing answers than with encouraging engagement. “At least make yourself knowledgeable… have an opinion,” he says.

He points to accessible actions. “The least you could do is vote… maybe volunteer… just being in community goes a long way,” he says. Knowledge, in his view, is most meaningful when it moves into proximity, when it shapes how people show up with one another.

When asked what belonging means, he returns to that same idea, with an added layer of risk. “Being curious enough to… get outside my own shell… being brave enough… putting myself at the mercy of being misunderstood,” he says. Belonging is built through conversation, through exposure, through a willingness to remain open.

“Eighteen steps” begins with a count, but it does not end there. The movement continues, shaped by the people willing to carry it forward.