Queen Taese Snowden

Queen Taese, also known professionally as Queen Taese Snowden, is an American homeschooling educator, speaker, and author based in Atlanta, Georgia, who describes herself as “The Queen of Black Homeschooling.”^[1] She is the founder and chief executive officer of the Liberated Minds Black Homeschool & Education Institute, an Atlanta-based organization providing an Afrocentric homeschooling curriculum, training, and resources to Black families.^[1][2]

Early life and family

Snowden began homeschooling her own children in the mid-1990s.^[1] According to a 2021 interview with Atlanta Black Star, she did not attend college herself but pursued homeschooling for her children regardless, incorporating field trips, museum visits, and informal outdoor study sessions into her curriculum.^[1] She is the mother of seven children, several of whom she homeschooled from an early age.^[1][3]

Two of her sons have been the subject of independent local news coverage of their homeschooling-linked educational paths. In 2013, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on her son Tayvon Snowden, then 16, who was homeschooled and pursued an interest in aviation through Atlanta-area youth aerospace programs, including a solo flight training program in Peachtree City, Georgia.^[4] A separate 2014 profile from Georgia Perimeter College's newsroom covered another of her sons, then an aerospace engineering student at the college, who credited his mother's homeschooling approach — described in the profile as declining to “put them in a box” — as a driving influence on his ambitions.^[5]

Liberated Minds Black Homeschool & Education Institute

Snowden founded the Liberated Minds Black Homeschool & Education Institute (operating under the name Queen Taese, LLC) in April 2012.^[2][6] The organization's flagship event, the Liberated Minds Black Homeschool & Education Expo, is an annual gathering in Atlanta that draws homeschooling families from across the United States and, according to the organization, internationally.^[2][7] A 2017 Indianapolis Recorder article describing the growth of Black homeschooling nationally quoted Snowden, then in her 22nd year of homeschooling, describing the expo as “the family reunion of African-centered education” and discussing the comparative affordability of homeschooling relative to public misconceptions about its cost.^[7]

Past expo programming has included workshops led by Black scholars and educators such as Runoko Rashidi, Marimba Ani, Chike Akua, Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti, and Claud Anderson.^[8] By the early 2020s, the organization had grown to describe an annual attendance in the thousands and had introduced a virtual arm, Homeschool HUEniversity, along with certification and micro-grant programs for homeschooling families.^[6]

Snowden has appeared as a guest speaker at events hosted by other Black-homeschooling organizations, including the annual teach-in organized by Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars (BFHES).^[9]

Media appearances and public commentary

Snowden has appeared as a homeschooling-focused commentator on broadcast news. In a segment for Fox 5 DC covering reports that the Trump administration was preparing an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, she was interviewed as “Educator Queen Taese” and discussed the role of federal funding in supporting low-income students, students with disabilities, and postsecondary access, characterizing the potential move as disproportionately affecting under-resourced communities.^[10]

She and her organization have also been referenced or featured in coverage of the broader growth of Black homeschooling, including in the 2021 Atlanta Black Star article discussing pandemic-era increases in Black families choosing to homeschool.^[1] Her own promotional materials additionally describe appearances on NBC and in The Huffington Post, though independent confirmation of the specific content of those appearances was not identified.^[6]

Writing

Snowden is the author of a self-published book, African American Families: Why We Homeschool, which she has described as reaching Amazon bestseller status in several homeschooling and parenting subcategories.^[2]

References