Last month, as her junior year of high school limped to an end, 17-year-old Gia Leon ventured back inside Odyssey STEM Academy in Lakewood, Calif., for the first time in months, hoping to find a better Wi-Fi signal than she could catch in her crowded home.
It was the last official day of her school-arranged internship with the Los Angeles-based Autry Museum, dedicated to telling the diverse stories of the American West. Leon had spent weeks digging into the history of the Shindana Toy Company, founded in the aftermath of the civil unrest in nearby Watts in 1965, when thousands of Angelenos took to the streets to protest and loot as part of a furious response to police brutality. Now, to complete her training as a student guide for the museum, she was going to lead her own online tour.
Leon told a couple dozen adults about Shindana’s hugely popular line of racially affirming…
