I FEATURE MAYNARD JACKSON YOUTH FOUNDATION MAKES SUCCESS A MATTER OF LEARNING & RESOLVE ATLANTA, Ga. — It's nine o'clock Saturday morning, and celebrated Alpha Brother Maynard Jackson (Morehouse '56) is selling encyclopedias to a class of inner-city teenagers. "If I could show you some encyclopedias that you could afford, and if you liked them, would you be interested in buying them?" Jackson play-acts the door-to-door sales pitch. "Yyes." A shy mumbling from the class. "I'm sorry, what was that?" Jackson feigns a hearing problem. Louder. "Yes, we would be interested." Jackson quickly switches to teacher mode: "What did I just get from you?" "A commitment," the class says, on familiar turf now. "And why do I want you to say the words, and not me?" A short silence before Summer, 17, speaks: "Because if I hear myself say it out loud, I'll be more likely to do it." Commitment, and getting commitments, is what drives the Maynard Jackson Youth Foundation (MJYF), an organization dedicated to cultivating leadership and salesmanship skills in African-American high schoolers from at-risk Atlanta neighborhoods. In the classroom scene above, commitment is taught in the context of sales techniques. But the emotional commitment of the Foundation's young charges — 80 percent of whom live in inner-city public housing — is at the core of its philosophy. And the commitment of the Foundation's teachers and benefactors is even more vital. "Young people today need to understand that it's within their power to be leaders, and to be successful, no matter what the obstacles in their path," Brother Jackson says. "Our role as adults who have succeeded—really, our obligation— is to show them how." "The Youth Foundation gives me a chance to live out the Alpha creed." First of all, servants of all, we shall transcend all. Internationally-known Brother Maynard H. Jackson, Jr. and former U.S. Army Colonel John C. Holley established the MJYF in 1990 with the goal of teaching African-American high school students the practical skills they will need to succeed in the professional and business worlds. "Servants of all" is a working reality at the Foundation, as much of its inTheSPHINX™ ~ Summer 1997
struction comes from working professionals—business people, attorneys and politicians who share their experience and expertise with the youths. Jackson, of course, is a prominent Alpha example. As thefirstAfrican-American mayor ofa major city in the South, as an attorney deeply involved in Atlanta's movement for the rights of the poor in the 1960s and 1970s, and as a successful entrepreneur today whose namesake company Jackson Securities was ranked fifth in African-American Investment Banking Firms by Black Enterprise Magazine (June '97), Jackson brings first-hand knowledge from all three sectors. Remarkably, yet not surprisingly, he attends and co-instructs a majority of the MJYF classes.