He might not have known it at the time, but one class taken 14 years ago at SUNY Jamestown Community College foreshadowed Justin Hubbard’s future in teaching and community activism.
“I was in a class called Native American history — very basic level Native American history,” Hubbard remembered. “And I found so much information and just overwhelming knowledge in that class that I wanted to continue to talk about these issues, to talk about the American Indian movement that I never talked about in my high school.
“I didn’t realize how much it would help me where now I work with students who are descendants of the activists that worked in the American Indian movement that I learned about at JCC. I was able to meet (Native American author and political activist) John Trudell, who was part of the American Indian movement, while I was here at JCC in 2010, and that really changed my life.”
Hubbard, who returned to his community college alma mater in September to moderate a panel of student activists for Constitution Day, has taught social studies and civics at Salamanca High School for more than a decade. He is also a leader of the Jamestown Justice Coalition activist group, which he helped establish in 2020 during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Hubbard was one of more than 200 to gather at Jamestown’s Dow Park on a Sunday afternoon in early June 2020 to protest racism, police brutality and the death of George Floyd.
“After that rally,” Hubbard said, “I just went with it. I started the Jamestown Justice Coalition with a lot of my now friends. We got involved in multiple rallies in 2020 … that’s really what got me going and how I got my start in activism.”
Sparked by that passion, Hubbard helped build a student activist group at Salamanca High in fall 2020.
“The first meeting that we had that I thought was just going to be two students, it was 15,” Hubbard said. “Then it became a regular meeting and we started to have Zoom meetings of 30-plus students.
“The first thing they wanted to do after they created a club was to put up the pride flag at all times on school grounds,” he said. “They had a meeting with the principal, put out a teacher survey and they made an educational video. They had a meeting with the superintendent that lasted more than an hour. They presented to the Board of Education themselves, and then they actually organized the flag raising ceremony.
“It took the entire school year for them to go through that effort,” he said. “But they did it. And the flag is still up today.”
The club has also met the board of education about the school’s dress code policy and created a clothing closet for students who are “in need of clothes so that they are gender affirming” or if they simply “need clothes for the day,” Hubbard said.
For his efforts at Salamanca, Hubbard was one of three recipients of the national American Civic Education Teacher Award in 2022.
Earning the award has given Hubbard new opportunities — like the one to lead the JCC Constitution Day panel — that allow him “to amplify civics and civics education, which is something I’m really passionate about when it comes to activism or learning about the constitution or voting or getting involved in the community.”
Shannon Bessette, a JCC anthropology professor who had Hubbard in her Native American history class, remembered the young student being “really hungry to learn.”
“You could see him just lighting up in class, as he made these new connections, learned about systems and how they can contribute to the empowerment or disempowerment of people,” Bessette added. “The great thing about Justin is that he has taken those lessons forward, and his activism is about teaching young people how they can be active and engaged in government and the community.”
Hubbard, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from SUNY Fredonia, is thankful for his college start at JCC and is happy to give back to the college. In October he delivered a keynote address on community activism during JCC’s faculty and staff development day.
“I graduated high school not knowing really where to go, not quite knowing what to do,” he said. “I had ideas in my head of social studies and education, but I wasn’t really ready to put those things together yet and didn’t necessarily have a direction.
“JCC gave me the support I needed to really realize my potential and what I was capable of,” he continued. “Having professors like Shannon Bessette really changed my life. It got me passionate about topics I had never even heard of before.”
Having Traci Langworthy as one of his history professors created a relationship he still taps into today to discuss social studies and to do different events.
JCC, Hubbard concluded, was “exactly what I needed at exactly the right time.”
