“Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow -- perhaps it all will.” - Albert Einstein
I didn’t know much about farming at the time I departed to serve my community. But I must admit, the time gap between sowing a seed and reaping a harvest seemed awfully slow. However, I learned through the process not to make time the focus. The secret to success is in the nature of the seed, not how long it takes to see results. For what you sow you will eventually reap, some seeds just take longer to harvest.
Shortly after receiving the check and gaining financial support for the program, the Huntsville Times newspaper started reporting on my program on a regular basis. Soon after, the local television networks started doing stories on my G.E.D. program, mainly Channel 48 news. I was on every morning show and whenever there was an incident involving at-risk youth I served as the expert consultant. Channel 48 and David Person even did an hour special on my work in the community. The local support started pouring in left and right. Individual donors started dropping off writing and typing paper, pens and pencils and all sorts of books. The biggest support came by way of a group of professional black men who recently formed a nonprofit organization by the name of 20 Distinguished Men of Huntsville. Their founder Lamar Higgins, who at the time was the personal assistant to the mayor, took a deep interest in the work I was doing and offered the organization’s support. Two months into my relationship with the organization, they offered me a private office space downtown and helped me to secure multiple grants. With their help, the news of my contributions to the atrisk population in the city grew rapidly. As a result, I was able to establish credibility amongst some of the city’s leading businessmen and women. Among them was, Hall of Famer, John Stallworth, the former wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers and a native of Alabama. He graciously absorbed all the cost associated with the G.E.D testing for my students. Another NFL player, Ralph Malone of the Cleveland Browns and also a native of Alabama lent his support. He believed in exposing students to opportunities outside of their neighborhood. He donated funds for field trips to places such as the Space and Rocket Center and other engineer based sites. He also secured tables for the students at elaborate galas and awards shows in order to expose them to a more affluent way of life. As a result of all the support, my students began to thrive. Not only were they now taking the test, many of them were passing with flying colors and moving on to find great jobs!
Trying to Make a Real Difference
COLLEGE STUDENTS PUSH EDUCATION
by JILL RHODES (Huntsville Times Staff Writer)
A younger Eric Thomas was always too busy running with friends, looking for trouble on the streets of downtown Detroit, to finish out his senior year in high school.
Older and more educated now, Thomas was marking up a chalk board recently in the Calvary Hill Community Center, adding and subtracting fractions for an audience of young black men from the Norwood Housing Project nearby.
“When I was 16, school just didn’t fit in to my schedule,” said Thomas, 22, a senior at Oakwood College. “I was out all the time, running with the boys, getting into trouble, so I dropped out. But one day I talked to the pastor at my church and he said, ‘get your General Equivalency Diploma. Go to Oakwood College’.”
Malcolm Gopher gets help with a math problem from Eric Thomas, left, and a helper, Lester Smith in class at Calvary Hill Community Center.
STUDENTS CONCERNED
Eventually, Thomas did earn his G.E.D. He was also accepted at Oakwood. But Thomas and a group of friends from Oakwood and Alabama A&M University are going further. Calling themselves the Concerned Black Students, Thomas and his friends invaded the Norwood neighborhood recently to recruit other young black kids — most of them drop-outs from Butler High School — for a GED preparation program the CBS students began on their own.
“I felt like if someone like my pastor could encourage me to get my GED, 1 could relate that to others who are in the same situation I was in,” Thomas said. “Most of the community leaders we’ve talked to here say this age group, from 16 to 25, is untouchable, that they are unapproachable.
“But that’s not true,” he added. “And that’s what we came here to prove.”
Thomas said the group targeted the Norwood neighborhood for the program because other public housing areas in the city seem to already enjoy some form of social improvement support.
In Norwood and the adjacent Love subdivision, however, the CBS group said the prevailing attitude among kids there is apathy — mostly driven by ignorance and a lack of any type of governmental support.
STREET RECRUITING
“We just came in here and approached many of these young men on the street corners,” said Irvin Daphins, 20, and an Oak-wood student working with CBS. “Eventually, we got them hooked basically by just getting them to know that, at this point, the only way they are going to see a real difference in their lives is to get an education.”