I was born in Greenville, MS in 1943. So I grew up during the most turbulent, terrible, and terrific time in American history. In 1968 I graduated from Jackson State College, Jackson MS. And almost from the day of graduation I was pulled into the Civil Rights movement. Having been called to the ministry while I was still in high school, I assumed a leadership role in the Civil Rights Movement throughout the sixties. I lectured at colleges and universities all over America. During that same period I hosted a radio program, “The Search For Human Dignity” that could be heard in fourteen Southern states.
I left Mississippi in 1973 to come north. After attending Butler University and Christian Theological seminary for a while, I moved to mid Missouri and served for the next five years as a minister in Fulton and Columbia, MO. In 1978 I moved to St. Louis. After teaching in the St. Louis public Schools for three years, I transferred to the Parkway school district. I taught at Parkway North High School, a predominately white school. As fate would have it, the year I started teaching in the Parkway school district, the district became involved in a court imposed desegregation program that bussed black children from St. Louis city to the predominantly white schools in West St. Louis County. I was the only black teacher at my school so I felt a special obligation to do everything that I could to help insure that the black children coming into Parkway North got the very best education that was available to them.
It was during my work at Parkway North that I learned and practiced many of the techniques and strategies that I have written about in my books and teach others how to employ in my workshops. I still see myself as a Civil Rights worker. The Civil Rights Movement has now moved to the classroom. If black children do not get the education they need to function as independent and contributing citizens in this society, the doors opened during the Civil Rights struggle will remain closed to them, and they will be left behind. Therefore, I am as passionate about the education of black children today as I was about the voting Rights of their grandparents in the sixties.
The president has challenged all educators to meet the standards set forth in no child left behind. I echo his sentiments, but I am just as demanding of black children, their parents, and the black community in general. Educators must have help from the black community to achieve the academic excellence we want for black children. You cannot educate people against their will. If black children are to catch up and keep up they are going to have to work harder than those who are in front of them. Education is a work right and not a birthright. This is the message that I carry all over the country.
I grew up around people who saw education as their ticket out of poverty. I started out as a sharecropper in Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the nation, but through education, my siblings and I, and many of our contemporaries have attained a status of which our parents could only dream. I retired from the classroom to help carry that message of hope and opportunity to children all over America.
My educational background, which, in addition to my degrees from Jackson State and Maryville Universities, include studies at Princeton University in Princeton, NJ, Butler University and Christian Theological seminary in Indianapolis, IN, and Webster University and Washington University in St. Louis, MO; my experiences as a leader in the Civil Rights movement, my many years as a classroom teacher to students of all races and nationalities, my constant involvement in the lives of black people as a minister and teacher, my two years as minister to an all white congregation in Troy, MO, and my participation in the life of the whole country, have equipped me to play a very special role in the education of black children, and all of America’s children, and to help them take every advantage of the wonderful opportunities they have in this great land.
