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Volume 48, Number 43
THURSDAY, June 30, 2022
Stint in federal prison leads student to divinity school
BY TEVIN STINSON THE CHRONICLE
The end of the semester is always an exciting time for college students. Stress from final exams has passed, and you get a few weeks to bask in the glory, or lowness, of the past semester’s work. For Ramon Durham, who recently finished his first semester at Wake Forest University School of Divinity where he’s working toward his master’s, the end of the grading period was a success. He finished with three As and two Bs which was good enough for a 3.82 GPA. The end of the semester also marked another significant point in Durham’s life: five years since he walked away from a federal prison. Durham, who is a native of Homestead, Pennsylvania, said he grew up going to church, but when he got to high school he started to follow the wrong crowd. “I grew up in the church and I’ll say around 15 I started feeling like my life was boring,” said Durham while reflecting on his childhood. “At that time I was just trying to figure out and understand what it meant to be a man and I was getting my information on what it meant to be a man by looking toward the streets.” While still trying to figure that out, Durham said, he turned to drinking and smoking. He said being intoxicated gave him a false sense of freedom. “In the process of trying to figure out who I was I decided
Photo by Tevin Stinson
Ramon Durham, who served two years in federal prison, is now working on a master’s degree at the Wake Forest University School of Divinity. to drink and smoke marijuana … and it captured me because I felt free. Although it was false, it was a freedom that I never experienced before,” Durham said. “It also caused me to not care. All the things that I cared about previously, the weights that were on my shoulders as a young 15-year-old trying to find his way, all that went out the window. I thought I had found the solution to all my problems.” Although he was experimenting with weed and alcohol, Durham did graduate
from high school and go on to attend Howard University. Attending the prestigious HBCU was something Durham dreamed of doing since he was in the 6th grade. And a trip his sophomore year of high school solidified his decision. He also credits Spike Lee’s “School Daze,” the “Bayou Classic,” and the hit TV-show “A Different World” for sparking his interest in HBCUs. “I wanted to attend Howard since like middle school and in the 10th grade I was in a college prep program called Upward
Bound and we went to D.C. that summer and we visited Howard and Georgetown,” Durham said. “It was just something about Howard that I was just drawn to. Then it was the people who went there like the Phylicia Rashads, P. Diddy went there, Taraji P. Henson went there, Debbie Allen … just all the names that came out of Howard, I wanted to be one of those names.” Like many college students, Durham’s first semester was filled with a lot of partying. While sitting in a bar on his 18th
birthday, Durham said he had an awakening, an epiphany that told him to get closer to God. “I had accepted Christ as my savior and got baptized because I grew up in church, but I will say at that time I committed my life to God. There’s a difference between accepting and making a commitment to live my life for God,” Durham said. Durham said he let go of the negative influences and changed his way of life for about two years before a bad experience pushed him away and back to his old way of life. “I had a bad experience and I walked away from church,” he said. “That’s why I said I had two different experiences at Howard. I had two sets of friends. I had all Christian friends at one point who weren’t into all that and I had another set of friends who I partied with … that’s a big reason why I ended up having to stay in school four more years, because I started partying.” Even with the ups and downs of his college experience at Howard, Durham did graduate in 2003 After enjoying the D.C. lifestyle for about a year, Durham returned to Homestead in January 2004. He said his initial plan was to stay there for a year, then move back to D.C. “After I went home I felt sucked into that lifestyle of late night and early mornings,” he said. Unable to find a job, Durham started selling drugs to support himself. That same year Durham See School on A2
Joycelyn Johnson, longtime city council member, dead at 73 The city of WinstonSalem lost another icon when it was announced that longtime city council member Joycelyn Johnson died last week. Johnson served four terms on the council
from 1993 to 2009 as the representative for the East Ward. During her tenure on the council, Johnson also served as chair of the Public Works committee and pushed for improved working conditions for the city’s sanitation division. For her hard work and dedication to the citizens of Winston-Salem, in 2018 the city’s public works facility located on Lowery Street was renamed the Jocelyn Johnson Municipal Service Facility. On the day the sign was unveiled, Johnson thanked her supporters. “It’s all about you. For all the things that you think I’ve done, it’s because of all of you,” Johnson said. “Regardless of the thickness of the forests
we’ve been in, whether it was with housing, community and economic development or health care, you all have been a part of it. This is your day just as much as it is mine.” Johnson also spearheaded several other projects across the city. She is credited for rejuvenating the area along Patterson Avenue, Old Greensboro Road, New Walkertown Road, Dreamland Park and the Fourteenth Street Community. She also led business analysis for New Walkertown Road, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Liberty Street, and Lowery Street. As news of Johnson’s passing started to surface on social media, Mayor Allen Joines made the
Joycelyn Johnson
Submitted photo
following statement: “On behalf of the citizens of Winston-Salem, I extend my deepest sympathies and condolences to the family and friends of former Council Member Joycelyn Johnson. Joycelyn Johnson was a dedicated public servant who worked hard for not only the citizens of the East Ward, but also for the good of the entire community,” Joines continued. “On a personal level, I was able to work with Ms. Johnson as a member of the city staff and then as a fellow elected official. I was always appreciative of her kind and gentle manner, while respectful of her fierce advocacy for programs she felt were needed.”
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BY TEVIN STINSON THE CHRONICLE