Danny Morris ’86 of I Have a Dream Foundation Helps Honor MLK Jr

On January 13, Danny Morris, Class of 1986, delivered a rousing, personal, and powerful address at Roxbury Latin’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration Hall. Danny serves as Director of National Programs for the I Have a Dream Foundation, an organization working to ensure that all children have the opportunity to pursue higher education. The foundation’s name is, of course, derived from Dr. King’s famous speech delivered during the March on Washington in 1963. In his role, Danny oversees the effective delivery of support and services to the network of the foundation’s affiliates.

Headmaster Brennan began Hall by saying, “We pause to recognize the contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King and to consider anew the principles of justice, equality, and brotherhood—principles he pursued ardently and about which he spoke eloquently. The prejudices and hatred that Dr. King worked so hard to eradicate remain in too many heads and hearts, even as laws and social policy have been advanced that protect and affirm the rights of all Americans. In these recent years, many headlines have focused on high profile cases involving race, violence, discrimination, activism, and, thankfully in many cases, hope.” In addition to being a talented and prolific musician and performer during his years as a student, Danny “served as a role model, tutor, and guide for younger Black students as they made the difficult transition from public and parochial schools to the rigors of Roxbury Latin,” Mr. Brennan recalled. “He was courageous and stood up to people and prejudices that were contrary to his values and precocious sense of self. This latter investment of his time, talent, and energy turned out to be indicative of his life’s calling.”

That calling was to serve and support young people from under-resourced communities, by providing the tools and resources they need to achieve their dreams of going on to and graduating from college—a career Danny has been committed to for three decades. He began that work with Teach for America as a kindergarten teacher in Inglewood, California, and continued it most recently as the Director of Educational Initiatives at United Way NYC, where he was responsible for creating an arts initiative that included a city-wide essay contest and annual talent showcase at the Public Theater as well as at the world-famous Apollo Theater. //

As we come together in this space, this has been a trying time, and any day that I open my eyes and can proceed on my own will through this world is a happy day. I am thrilled to see you all because we have gone through hell these past couple of years, and I know you may have been impacted personally in some way. So it is with gratitude and humility that I come to you today. It’s been a little over 35 years since I was on this stage receiving my diploma. The stage has changed a bit, and the people in the seats have changed a bit, and seeing all these changes, it’s like an alternate reality. Speaking of which, any Marvel fans here? I'm a DC guy, but I appreciate Marvel, and the reason I ask that is because those of you who’ve been watching the Marvel films—especially the recent Spiderman—know about the multiverse. I’m fascinated by these alternate timelines, alternate versions of reality, manipulation of time, especially in movies. This morning, I want us to think about What if?—I want us to explore these alternate realities, parallel timelines, different versions of people. As Mr. Brennan mentioned, I work today at the I Have a Dream Foundation. As you all know, those words, “I have a dream,” are inextricably linked to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Are you aware, however, that Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech was not originally supposed to happen at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom? Dr. King’s speech writer was Clarence Jones—Jones was also his advisor, his lawyer. They had worked together on speeches for many years, and for that particular speech, Mr. Jones had a summary of what could be used as a speech with different points. Those points related to this promissory note that had not been fulfilled, had not been paid by this country to African Americans. That is what Dr. King was going to speak about, and if you look at the footage, you’ll see that Dr. King from time to time looks down because he’s referencing that speech. What happens is that at one point Mahalia Jackson—who had been known as the Queen of Gospel at that time—from about 50 feet away shouts, “Tell them about the dream, Martin. Tell them about the dream.” Now, Ms. Jackson had been the opening act, if you will, for many of Dr. King’s speeches.

“She had heard him talk about his vision for social justice, his dream of social justice for this country. And so she encouraged him to talk about that dream. So Dr. King moves aside the papers that contained his planned-for speech, and he goes into the I Have a Dream speech, his vision for this country, and for the world, and the rest—as they say—is history. And what he talked about, Mr. Brennan told you—social justice, brotherhood—for me it really was about community: building community, creating community, serving community. I often wonder, what if Dr. King hadn’t given that speech? What if Mahalia Jackson hadn’t encouraged him to go off script? What if Mahalia Jackson hadn’t been given the opportunity to say those words? Because quiet as it’s kept in the Civil Rights Movement, Black women were not given a place of prominence. They were not allowed to take center stage, to speak, to further the movement. So, what if? Well, I might not have been at the I Have a Dream Foundation. The Foundation might not have existed. I Have a Dream Foundation was founded in 1981 by Eugene Lang, an entrepreneur who amassed his wealth as the president and CEO of REFAC Technology, which made its money through holding patents for things like LCDs (liquid crystal displays, which you see on the front of televisions), for ATMs, for barcodes, for scanners and camcorders. I’m going back in history now, but REFAC held patents for VCRs and cassette players, and they made more of their money by filing lawsuits for infringements of those patents. They would bring those lawsuits against photography companies, like Kodak, and retailers, like Radio Shack. Mr. Lang grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan during the depression. He was a great student, graduating from high school at the age of 14, entering college at 15, majoring in economics at Swarthmore, and, in 1940, earning a master’s degree from the Columbia School of Business. The story goes that Mr. Lang went back to his middle school, P.S. 161 in East Harlem. Now, you all hear a lot about Harlem—home of the famed Apollo Theater. It’s the home of Black culture and creativity. East Harlem also exists. It’s a place of great poverty, mainly Latinx in demographics. But at that time, the demographics were different. So, Mr. Lang went back to P.S. 161 to give the commencement speech for the 61

students graduating from his middle school. He was going to give them the usual commencement speech—go get them, try hard, and you'll get rich, and things will be great. But before he went to the podium, he spoke to the principal. The principal told him that three quarters of the students graduating were probably not going to graduate from high school. So he’s got his speech and he’s feeling very uneasy. Why am I going to go and talk to the kids about “try hard, get rich” when that may not happen?

So he ditched the speech and spoke to the kids about dreams—having dreams, fulfilling dreams—and he told them one of his most memorable experiences was listening to the I Have a Dream speech by Dr. King. And on impulse he told all of those graduating sixth graders that he would provide scholarships in the amount of $500 for every year of college. So that’s $2,000 he was going to provide to each of them toward their college tuition if they graduated and were accepted to a four-year college. In addition, he told them he would add to that each year that they fulfilled their schooling from seventh grade to 12th grade. So, of course everyone’s sitting there in stunned silence, and then the room erupts into applause. Mr. Lang fulfilled that promise. But what he learned was that there was much more going on in the lives of those students than what was happening in the classroom.

So he hired a coordinator who looked at the social and emotional life of those students. That coordinator provided tutoring and mentorship, and connected with families. By the end, of those 61 students, 11 of them had moved out of the city, and of those remaining 50, one got into trouble. Three had major academic challenges that prevented them from receiving that commitment Mr. Lang had made. But the rest went on to graduate and to contribute to society, to build community, to create community, to serve the community. I often think, “What if Mr. Lang hadn’t said those words? Hadn't been told by the principal what might happen to those young people? The lives of thousands of students may have been very different. I might not have been at the I Have a Dream Foundation. My life’s trajectory might have put me in a different direction.

Mr. Lang and Dr. King have played an important part in my life—what they stand for, what they’ve accomplished, is part of what I’ve been doing on my road of building community, creating community, and serving community. Now, if you’re a movie fan, this is the part where the screen would get wavy, gauzy, and there’d be a caption that reads “Circa 1980,” because we’re going into the past.

I was born in Montreal, Canada, and I grew up in Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury. I was raised by a strong, Black woman from Barbados. She was not given the opportunity

for education because she was a girl. So, education was always something that she appreciated and craved, and she made sure that I was going to get the best education possible. She sent me to parochial schools, because she believed that parochial schools gave a great education, with structure, which was very important to her. She also made sure that I was engaged in activities outside of school. I was enrolled in dance and music and drama from the age of three.

At my dance class, she met a woman named Adonica Chaplain whose son, Jimmy, was attending Roxbury Latin. This was around sixth grade, and I attended St. Angela’s in Mattapan at the time. My mom learned about this school, made the arrangements, made sure it happened, and I entered Roxbury Latin. My mom was thrilled; she knew about Roxbury Latin’s prominence, and she was very excited. I was, as well. But things took a turn, because I was a Black boy in a predominantly white school, in a predominantly white neighborhood, and that was told to me and shown to me just about every day for the first four years that I was here. Andy Thompson and Dana Chandler (who were the two other Black boys in my class) and I had to take about three buses to get here and back home.

We spent just about every week being chased up and down St. Theresa to Centre Street to take the bus out of town, being called n—s and being told we didn’t belong here, having things thrown at us, crossing the street and having cars rev their engines as though they were going to hit us. Needless to say, this was not a place that I wanted to be on a regular basis, and I made that known. It was tense, and we didn’t feel supported by the administration at that time. I did have Mr. Brennan, fortunately, who was my advisor—my primary person, and I’ll talk more about that—but it was tough going. Fortunately, when I left these hallowed halls, I left West Roxbury, and went to Roxbury to the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts.

The Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts was an afterschool program born out of the Civil Rights Movement. There we often learned about Dr. King; I learned his speech and recited it around Boston and in New York and on the local PBS station. We also learned about Malcolm X. We learned about—and had—pride in ourselves. When I went back to Roxbury, I was told that my skin was beautiful, that I was beautiful, and that was different from what I heard here. On one occasion, a classmate felt emboldened to call one of my classmates a n—r. One of my classmates felt emboldened to ask me if I burned up in this skin, because he had learned in science that dark colors conduct heat.

“The I Have a Dream Foundation... has served more than 20,000 dreamers, as we call them. We currently have 4,000 dreamers from kindergarten to college: 92 percent identify as Latinx or African American. They qualify for free lunch; they will be the first in their families to go to college.”

But again, I left these halls and went home to Roxbury, and I had that balance. I had that sense of pride that I could come back into this building with. I also had people around me there who encouraged me, who told me that I needed to fulfill that journey. Many people had sacrificed and died so that I could have this opportunity to go to school with white people, to shop, to go to a pool, to dine. What I experienced at Roxbury Latin was horrible to me. Even talking to you now, I still tense up thinking about it, at my age. The trauma was real. However, it was nothing compared to what others had gone through before me, and what was going on in the city at that time, and what other African Americans were experiencing. So what if I had simply quit Roxbury Latin? Or I’d done something so horrible that they said, “Time to go”? Where would that trajectory have taken me? But because of my village at Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts, I toughed it out, and I thought about community. They told me about building community, being part of the community here to take advantage of the resources here, to then go back into the community and to serve others. Finally, the lessons took hold: By junior year, a switch flipped, and I became more involved in school and wanting to build community here. I took part in plays and in Glee Club, because being involved was the expectation. I took that mentality to Yale—that sense of wanting to build myself to then go into underserved communities.

A pivotal point for me was when I worked at the Urban Improvement Corps, which is where I got a sense of working in education. Urban Improvement Corps was a tutoring organization run solely by college students. I began as a tutor, became a department head, and by junior year I was co-director. I got a taste for education and working to help younger children excel academically, but I was also interested in what was going on beyond the classroom and trying to fill that gap—that social, emotional need.

After Yale, I went to Teach for America. I was assigned to Los Angeles Inglewood—home of the Great Western Forum where the Lakers play, and also home of the Bloods gang. I was deep in the heart of Bloods territory, teaching Kindergarten. I was the only Black, male Kindergarten teacher at the time. Though I didn’t have an education background, Teach for America was recruiting recent college graduates, especially people of color, males, to go into the classroom in underserved, urban and rural areas. I loved my time as a Kindergarten teacher with Teach for America.

I had a passion and a commitment—to building community, to creating community, to serving community. Another pivotal point of my journey included being a director in East Harlem for the Hope Leadership Academy. On 9/11, when the towers fell, teenagers were especially affected by those terrorist attacks. The Hope Leadership Academy came out of the desire to serve teenagers and help them cope with the violence that had been going on in this world. Young people came in as peer facilitators and learned the skills to facilitate workshops on

things like violence, violence prevention, healthy relationships, and financial literacy.

I thrived there. I loved it. I was in the heart of an underserved community, working with students to give them the skills to go out into the world, to build community, create community, and serve community. Later I was a community school director at Fannie Lou Hamer High School in the Bronx. The South Bronx is one of the poorest congressional districts in the country, and Fannie Lou Hamer High School bore the name of a civil rights maverick. I was proud to be there because we were providing resources to students, especially tending to the social-emotional needs of those students, building community, creating community, serving community.

That is what I’ve been trying to do in my journey. The I Have a Dream Foundation, which just celebrated its 40th year, has served more than 20,000 dreamers, as we call them. We currently have 4,000 dreamers from Kindergarten to college: 92 percent identify as Latinx or African American. They qualify for free lunch; they will be the first in their families to go to college.

It’s my passion, my mission, to make sure that young people have the resources and the will to continue moving on, moving forward. You all have the cognitive abilities and physical abilities. But what about the social-emotional aspect? When I talk about that, I’m talking about intestinal fortitude—adaptability, the ability to cope with life’s challenges. That is what I’m focused on.

So my first message to you is about refining your brand. Brands, we know, have value. I’m not talking today about brands in terms of products, but in terms of intrinsic value. You may not know it, but your brand already exists within this school. Is it a brand that you have created, or is your brand a result of something you’ve been doing? I want you to think about your brand: What are your values? What do you stand for when you walk in this building? Is your brand apparent? When you talk, when you just stand still, is your brand visible?

The second thing is finding a primary person. Kerry Brennan mentioned that he was my advisor while I was at Roxbury Latin. He was more than an advisor—he was my primary person. Primary person is a term used in social work; it means a caring adult who knows your story and is going to provide you with the resources to be successful. I told you about my rocky experience here. This man was my primary person. He knew my story.

I had another primary person at the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts; his name was Vernon F. Blackman, and he was the Director of Drama. Both of these men were like surrogate fathers: they knew my story, they provided me with the resources to succeed, they were interested in my growth. They were also the people that others would come to if I was mucking it up to say, “Hey, make your boy straighten up and fly right.”

It is so important that you have a primary person. As teens, you’re going through a lot, and it is important that you have someone to talk to. This has been a challenging time. Adolescence is a challenging time. I’ve served as a primary person for many young people, and it was so important that they had that outlet, that resource so they could then go on to build community, and create community, and serve community.

The final strategy that I’m encouraging you to use is having a board of directors: those could be your mentors, but they are, again, looking out for your best interests. Boards of directors help guide companies to make sure they are on the right paths. Your board of directors should do that for you, but it should be a diverse board of directors, representing different races, nationalities, sexes, sexual orientations—it should be reflective of the world, because that is the perspective you will need increasingly as you get older. That is the perspective that Dr. King wanted all of us to have: a global perspective, a perspective of brotherhood, of community.

I wish you much luck. I am envious, especially of you seniors. You have great things in store. As you develop—and you get this board of directors and these primary people—I am more than willing to be a part of that village. I did leave this school for quite a while, but I’m back. I’m ready to be back, and I’m willing to be back, and I thank you for allowing me to be back. //