BLACK MALE SUMMIT
(Pictured l-r) John Eaves Jr. ’84, chairman of the Fulton (Ga.) County Commission, Courtney English ’07, member of the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education; Ceasar C. Mitchell ’91, president of the Atlanta City Council participate in the Black Male Summit.
The overwhelming consensus coming out the Summit was that everyone—educators, administrators, legislators, businessmen, clergy, parents … in other words, the village—has a role to play. More than 700 attendees, 2,000 tweets, and up to 1.5 million who received content from tweeters contributed to the current groundswell of interest in African American and Hispanic males and the disadvantages they struggle with in education, as well as in the larger society. One of the tweets broadcast around the world during the Summit was: “investing in education is not philanthropy or charity its leadership.” Morehouse is poised to take leadership on the national conversation on black male education. While RayPAC may have struck just the right note, the choice of Morehouse as the first institution to host the four-city summit was nothing less than poetic justice. Approximately 2,000 men—mostly African American—attend the College whose oldest building, Graves Hall, faces a burial ground for Confederate soldiers. Morehouse students are quite literally being educated on the very soil where men died to keep their ancestors in bondage. As the world’s only historically black college for men, President John Silvanus Wilson Jr. ’79 predicts that Morehouse will indeed emerge as a national leader in the movement to ensure that black boys have a fair chance to make the grade in U.S. schools. “We are going to be the epicenter for solutions and the exploration of the problems in dealing with the African American male in a path-breaking way,” Wilson said. At Morehouse, about 40 percent of students graduate in four years—higher than the national average of 33 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The College was recently cited by U.S. News and World Report for being among the top schools in the nation at retaining freshmen. For firstyear students starting in fall 2008 through 2011, Morehouse’s retention rate was 82.5 percent, coming in second only to Spelman’s 88 percent among HBCUs. MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE
40 COMMEMORATIVE INAUGURATION ISSUE 2014
John H. Jackson, CEO of the Schott Foundation—whose mission is to achieve fully resourced, quality preK-12 public education—says the nation can learn from Morehouse’s success. “Morehouse has young men who have matriculated through their K-12 education,” said Jackson. “The voices of these young men need to be engaged to help systems get more students to where they are today. We need a mechanism by which the voices of Morehouse Men can help inform how districts begin to provide the necessary supports so that all students can have a fair and substantive opportunity to learn.” Several Morehouse alumni are already leading the charge. James Shelton ’89 is the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education. Otha Thornton ’89 is the first black male president of the National Parent Teacher Association. Michael Lomax ’68, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund, and Bryant Marks ’94, director of the Morehouse Research Institute and the Morehouse Male Initiative, were both recently appointed to President Obama’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans. Shelton, Thornton and Marks were among the Morehouse alumni who participated in the Black Male Summit, along with John Eaves Jr. ’84, chairman of the Fulton (Ga.) County Commission, Courtney English ’07, member of the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education; Ceasar C. Mitchell ’91, president of the Atlanta City Council. Other participants included David Johns, executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans; Damon Williams, senior vice president and chief educational and youth development officer of Boys and Girls Club of America; and Amy DuBois Barnett, editor of Ebony magazine. A session on empowering parents and guardians to support African American excellence challenged parents and grandparents in the audience to show up for their kids at school so that teachers and administrators know that students have someone who cares about their success.