Meet Anthony Downer II | Academic Coach, Educator, Historian, & Writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Anthony Downer II and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Anthony, how does your business help the community?
Liberation Learning exists at the intersection of education and social impact, grounded in the Black intellectual tradition. The organization empowers Black youth scholars to enhance their learning outcomes and social-emotional well-being through intentionally curated, historically responsive tutoring, programming, and resources. Inspired by Black educators whose work transcended the classroom, we center learning Black history as essential to reclaiming identity, challenging oppressive power structures, and fostering freedom. For example, our podcast dat way: conversations on education and liberation has featured episodes that shed light on student experiences and needs during the pandemic. Our walking tours recover people and places essential to the heritage and development of neighborhoods like downtown Decatur. Dr. Woodson argued, “If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.” For Black people, learning and defending their history is a matter of physical and psychological survival.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I was born in 1994 to Jasmine, a native of Oakland, and Anthony, a native of the Pittsburgh community in Atlanta who served in the Navy. Through books and worn photographs, my mom introduced me not only to myself but to my lineage, our family woven into the long, global story of Africans. She taught me early that my people were not simply enslaved; we were builders, disrupters, thinkers, organizers. And through her mantra, “Each one, teach one,” she gave me the North Star of my life’s work.
Growing up as the oldest of four Black boys, the public school system was rarely designed with our brilliance in mind. I spent my childhood negotiating a dissonance: academic success came easily, but classrooms rarely reflected my identity, history, or intellectual hunger. I learned early how to code-switch to survive gifted and AP courses and elitist spaces. College sharpened my politics and clarified my purpose. At the University of Chicago, the Black radical tradition found me, and I embraced it fully. I originally studied political science for a career in law and politics. However, shortly after graduation, I began to understand my true vocation: teaching the truth to build the future.
In 2018, five years after graduating high school, I returned to Gwinnett County, as a world history teacher. My students were predominantly young people of the global majority and multilingual learners. I created Black-centric, abolitionist curricula grounded in criticality, identity development, intellectualism, and joy. Over the years, I taught world history, government/civics, high school transition, Africana Studies, and a postsecondary coaching course to hundreds of youth scholars in Gwinnett County Public Schools, Atlanta Public Schools, and City Schools of Decatur. I briefly left the classroom for a central office role in City Schools of Decatur, where I served as Equity Coordinator and supported over 5,600 scholars and 900 staff members through anti-racist professional development, the cultivation of Equity Teams, and community-centered coalition-building .From the classroom to clubs (such as Beta Club, GENTS mentorship program, the Black Student Union, and the Student Equity Team) to the community to the central office, I have co-constructed sites of freedom-dreaming, where learners examined decolonized schooling, engaged in project-based learning, and honed their criticality, intellectualism, identity, joy, and skills. The learners and scholars I have taught are co-conspirators and architects towards justice and liberation.
The pandemic–coupled with a rebellion and racial reckoning–was a breaking point. In June 2020, my comrades and I co-founded Gwinnett Educators for Equity and Justice (GEEJ), demanding better for the diverse learners in the largest school district in the state. Over two years, we built ethnic studies curricula, led culturally responsive professional learning, flipped the school board to include its first Black women, secured a historic superintendent transition, and advanced restorative practices districtwide.
By 2021, Georgia’s anti-CRT laws intensified the attack on educators like me. Still, we refused to comply. Out of this work, I co-founded the K16 Teach Truth Coalition (now the Teach for Freedom Collective), a statewide coalition of primary, secondary, and tertiary educators committed to resisting censorship and dismantling anti-Black educational policy. We hosted workshops on how to navigate and resist censorship, wrote articles, protested from school board meetings to the Capitol, and more. To coordinate our solidarity across space, I also contributed to the anthology with fellow ethnic studies scholars, Power of Our Stories Won’t Stop: Intergenerational Truthtelling as Civic Democratic Practice. We shared our personal narratives and the histories often missing from public school curricula.
My pedagogy cannot be contained by brick and mortar. In 2022, I founded Liberation Learning, an unapologetically Black, joyful, radical organization that tutors Black students, curates learning resources, and keeps stories of the African diaspora alive through community programs and resources. Our podcast, dat way: conversations on education and liberation, contextualizes contemporary white supremacy, the anti-CRT hysteria, and ongoing freedom struggles. With the support of the Abolitionist Teaching Network (ATN), we continued producing cultural, historical, and political content that reached new audiences during some of the most dangerous years for Black and queer educators.
I have contributed to several community organizations that center empowerment, joy, and organizing for Black people and other people of the global majority, including the Leaders of Color at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, Georgia Educators for Equity and Justice, Gwinnett SToPP, the Gwinnett and DeKalb chapters of the NAACP, and the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights.
Today, I remain grounded in the same commitments that shaped me as a child. I now serve as a Senior Financial Aid Counselor at Georgia State University and continue to grow Liberation Learning. I also write and perform poetry as aj lovell.
My abolitionist work is ancestral, rooted in the determination that drove Africans to achieve, my enslaved ancestors to survive, my Southern kin to migrate, and my Oakland relatives to agitate. It is also deeply personal: mother as an ancestor, the students who changed my life, the rightsholders I serve, and the comrades I’ve lost or locked arms with. I carry them all.
I do this work because education is the practice of freedom.
Because my people dreamed me into existence.
Because the revolution needs teachers and storytellers, griots and fundi.
Because my ancestors gave me roots and wings, and charged me to use both.
I am not their wildest dream.
Their dreams were far more expansive.
I am simply one chapter in a centuries-long struggle for liberation—
a story still being written,
a lineage still teaching,
a people still marching forward.
Asé.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If my best friend were visiting for a week, I would take them on a soulful journey through the vibrant heart of the metro Atlanta area.
Monday: After my workday at Georgia State University, we hop on MARTA and head to Decatur for dinner at Platez.
Tuesday: We dive into history at the Apex Museum, then indulge in some wings and shots at Strikeout Wings.
Wednesday: We explore unique finds while thrifting, followed by a visit to my brothers on Memorial Drive, and prayers for good plates at Collard Green Cafe.
Thursday: Creativity flows at Urban Grind Cafe, where we listen and nod to precious poetry before heading to explore Edgewood.
Friday: We find ourselves outside as we bemoan the absences of fried mushrooms at Harold’s or lose ourselves in the rhythm of a concert at the Coca-Cola Roxy.
Saturday: Time for some tacos on Buford Highway or Indian Trail, followed by an evening of karaoke at Impulse Lounge in Norcross.
Sunday: We slow down to recharge, lounging in a local park, gathering books from the library, or decolonizing our minds at the New Black Wall Street Market in Stonecrest. Our journey will weave together culture and stories.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I dedicate my shoutout to Jasmine Antoinette Williams, my mom and favorite ancestor. Jasmine was a remarkable woman whose enduring spirit of love and service shaped not only my life but countless others. Raised in Oakland, California, she passed down a maternal legacy of faith, mutuality, and persistence to her four sons. From teaching us Black history early on to embracing entrepreneurship, she lived a life defined by purposeful passion and unwavering compassion. One of her most important mantras, “each one, teach one,” is the foundation of my own commitment to teaching and service. Liberation Learning and all that I strive for are direct reflections of Jasmine’s nurturing and guidance.

Website: https://linktr.ee/liberationlearning

Instagram: @liberationlearning

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-l-d-a9178199/

Image Credits
First image – Emory Rose Photography