he decided to do entrepreneurial things, and now he’s a real estate investor in California and Georgia. My roommate Chuck Smith is the head of compliance for Prudential. David Wilson is an emergency Medical Doctor in Florida. David Wall Rice is a tenured professor as well as Associate Provost, both at Morehouse College. Dana Johnson a businessman and musician. Dewayne Martin an educator in Atlanta, GA. Eric Wilson a banker with Citizens Trust Bank. Agai Jones was in the Peace Corps and has led a life of fostering international development. Nathaniel Smith created the Partnership for Southern Equity. Last but not least, my good friend Shakir Stewart was a Sr. V.P. of Island Def Jam before his untimely passing;. I miss him. Curtis Valentine ’00 started the Prince George’s Community College to Morehouse pipeline. When you see a great idea, you can’t see anything wrong with it. These are brothers who come from a Community College with credits, are fo-
Annual homecoming fellowship with Charles Fischer, III ’97 and Telley S. Madina
85 WE ARE MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE / JUNE 2019
cused, are motivated and who want to be part of the brotherhood. Why would anyone turn that down? This is an innovative way to increase the student body like Mays did with the early entrance program at Morehouse in the mid 1940’s! It’s the same thing that Mordecai Johnson’11 did at Howard in the mid 40’s with returning WW II vets.. I met my wife at Morehouse Glee Club concert in 2004. My father, Julius Coles’64, was there with his wife Mrs. Coles and their daughter Carmen. I asked Carmen where she was from, and she said ’Vienna’, meaning Northern Virginia, and I said, ’I didn’t know they had Negroes in Austria.’ But I got her phone number. It worked! I got married in 2009, by a Morehouse Man, Rev. George Walker’91. And so, we have my son Mossi, Jr. who will Morehouse Class of 2032 and then Malaika Kamala, Spelman’2035 after Sen. Kamala Harris. I call our son Mossi, Jr. ’Dutch’ because he acts like Ernest
“Dutch” Morial, the first black Mayor of New Orleans. We inculcate them because it’s our culture and they need to know about it. Frank Mankiewicz was Robert Kennedy’s press secretary in 1968 and he wrote a one of the most profound passages I’ve ever read in his autobiography. Bobby Kennedy was on a plane in 1968 and there were four reporters peppering him with questions. So one of them asks, ’Senator Kennedy, what do you think about the death penalty?’ and Bobby says ’Well I’m against it in all cases.’ And the reporter says, ’Well you weren’t that way when you were Attorney General.’ And Bobby says, ’Well, you’re right.’ She said, ’Well what made you change your mind?’. He said ’I was in favor of the death penalty until I read Camus’. He was talking about Albert Camus, the French philosopher. What Mankiewicz then said was ’Most people form the majority of their beliefs and ideas at a very young age, and they live off of those meager intellectual earnings
