Love bloomed over years for Chicagoans
By Kelvin Childs
For newlyweds Rachel Burks-Crouch (B.S., 2005) and Kimberly Burks-Crouch (B.A., 2003), their love of each other began with their love of Howard University.
The native Chicagoans met on campus in Spring 2002, after each was initiated into separate sororities. Hanging out with their line sisters on The Yard, they struck an easy friendship.
“Our lines were really close to each other. We all hung together. So, during our undergraduate career we remained in touch, and we were also part of the same social circle,” Rachel said.
The friendship persisted after graduation, as they built lives in the Washington area. Kimberly moved back to Chicago for family reasons around 2012, but Rachel remained.
“D.C. is a place that unites people regardless of, you know, all the different subgroups we're in. Being gay, it was so inclusive as it relates to acceptance and being able to walk into places and no one’s staring at you. Being able to go places, and it’s the norm and people are just welcoming. In the streets you’re just like a regular person, right? And D.C. offers that, and most states don’t,” Rachel said.
As for Kimberly, “Being in Chicago for maybe five or six years, I was really itching to get back to D.C., and I made a joke to some of my girlfriends in Chicago. I was like, ‘I can’t. I can’t go back to DC. I can’t afford it unless I have a two-income household.’ And here we are, not knowing that you’re speaking certain things into existence.”
They both frequently returned to Howard for Homecoming and met at other social gatherings in their friend circle, but never progressed beyond friendship.
Kimberly said, “Yeah, literally, it was two decades of just crushing on each other, but never really making a move. And our friends knew, and they're like, ‘Here they go again.’”
Things got serious when Kimberly and two of her line sisters attended – or as she put it, “crashed” – Rachel’s birthday dinner in 2021. Affectionate moments at the party led of deep conversations and eventually a proposal, and they were wed in Chicago on May 19, 2024. But Kimberly’s move to the D.C. area, job search and their wedding planning last year meant one thing didn’t happen: a honeymoon. They plan to remedy that with an anniversary trip to St. Martin, St. Barts and Anguilla.
As educators — Kimberly is director of education programs at Beacon House, a charter school in Ward 5, and Rachel is principal of Perry Street Preparatory Public Chater School — both model for their students HBCU pride and love of Howard.
For Kimberly, it began with a campus visit with her half-brother when she was a child. Returning as a teenager, she said, “I can really not just feel the history and the gravity of it all, but now I’m at an age where I can actually envision myself on campus and moving through the space and seeing all of these beautiful Black people from all over the country and all over the world, and knowing that I could be a part of this community, in this network of learning and doing,” she said.
Rachel too was struck by the power of Howard. “It was literally the best decision I’ve ever made. When people say things like ‘Howard made me,’ I honestly believe that Howard made me, just the foundation and community like Howard. Howard is where I built lifelong connections, including meeting Kim, developing deep relationships in my sorority sisters and friends. … Howard just taught me how to be proud to be Black and how to just understand what it means to be Black. You know, in nurturing my sense of identity and pride as a Black woman, like providing a space celebrating uplift, Black excellence.”
That love of Alma Mater extends to giving back, whether its donating to anniversary class gifts, volunteering for fundraisers or mentoring their students and showing them that college can be part of their future, which can take them to heights they haven’t known were possible. “I’m always in without asking for money back, without asking for anything in return, because I do believe that we should be giving back to Howard,” Rachel said.