Rev. Cortly C.D. Witherspoon is one of that number who is attempting to establish himself as the next President of the Baltimore City Branch NAACP. Dr. Marvin Cheatham, in deciding not to run for another term as president, has left giant shoes to fill. Witherspoon is hoping the shoes will fit his feet.

In this video he takes a few moments to share his vision for the NAACP and what can be expected if he is elected president.

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It’s a message that resonates well within the American Afrikan community of Baltimore. We have long understood and experienced the minority community’s strategy as it relates to “public safety.” Their strategy has primarily focused on incarceration and the criminalization of Black people. The majority community experienced this most recently under the regime of former Baltimore mayor, Martin O’Malley. His “zero-tolerance” policy saw thousands of people illegally arrested in Baltimore. Thanks to the courageous leadership of Delegate Jill P. Carter (D-41), Dr. Marvin Cheatham (former president of the Baltimore City Branch of the NAACP), and others, advocates won an illegal arrest lawsuit against the Baltimore City Police Department earlier this year.

However, Martin O’Malley’s push for more incarceration of Baltimore’s majority community continues. Currently, he is preparing to build a $104 million dollar prison for Baltimore’s Afrikan youth with construction slated to begin on Friday, October 1, 2010; just two weeks after primary elections in Maryland. (He is counting on the Afrikan community in Baltimore to march around in Irish green and vote for him anyway despite the fact that he wishes to lock up their children!)

To many in Baltimore’s American Afrikan community, Gregg Bernstein represents a continuation and extension of O’Malley’s reach in the city. With a Bernstein win, O’Malley would have another ally to add to his Baltimore political machine – already having the unconditional support of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. The fact that Gregg Bernstein’s wife, Sheryl Bernstein, is the Director of Criminal Justice in the Baltimore Mayor’s Office is just another disconcerting feature of this election race. [SOURCE: Jewish Times] A Governor who has the Mayor, many city council members, members of the Mayor’s Office, many of the city’s pastors, and the City’s State’s Attorney all in his pocket spells more bad news for Baltimore’s Black community.

Instead of addressing the root causes of crime in Baltimore as Jessamy recommends; Bernstein would be another arrow in the quiver of Martin O’Malley’s “lock ‘em all up” strategy.

The Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of Baltimore & Vicinity is expected to endorse Patricia Jessamy for Baltimore City State’s Attorney and will join many others in encouraging Baltimore’s Black community in particular to do the same.

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It’s election season in Baltimore so that means incumbents are making their rounds attempting to remind people how good life is with them in office and hopeful newbies are hitting the pavement making the case as to why they should be catapulted to political office. Admittedly, I am a bit disenchanted with electoral politics these days. I understand voting to be ONE tool which can be used in the empowerment of my people, but the tool is quite rusty. American Afrikans in Baltimore vote and vote and vote and still our communities drown in a toxic mix of divestment, occupation, and hopelessness.

I don’t give much weight to politicians speeches anymore. As Jesus recommends by way of scripture, I examine their fruit. (You shall know a tree by the fruit it bears.) Sadly, there are orchards of corrupt and corroding trees in the political landscape of Baltimore City.

However, every now and then I see a glimmer of hope in someone whose fruit suggests that they won’t genuflect to the political establishment, but will stand firm and advocate for the uplift of their community.

Currently, I see this glimmer in Mr. Rodney Burris, candidate for State Delegate in the 43rd District. Mr. Burris is charismatic, grounded in the community in which he lives, and active in local organizations. There’s good fruit on the tree. And while we have a personal relationship, I don’t extend my support based on that. (This isn’t high school!) I extend my support to Mr. Burris because of his alignment with a political agenda that I embrace. While I sense that he is still developing a rootedness in self-determination for American Afrikans in Baltimore (the clear majority people in this city); I’ve heard enough as it relates to his publicly expressed support of agenda items to pull the lever for him in the voting booth.

Currently, State Delegate Jill Carter (D-41) is the only Baltimore politician who has proven year in and year out to be committed to the uplift of the Black community without reservation, but if Rodney Burris stays on the path, remains committed to his community, and draws near to the example of Carter, he just might march into a comparable legacy of his own.

I support Mr. Rodney Burris for State Delegate in Baltimore’s 43rd District.

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And probably most of all, we owe a collective debt of gratitude to Ms. Ella Baker. She was the engine behind so many of the fascinating groups who organized and put their necks on the line fighting U.S. apartheid. Barbara Ransby in her book, Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, paints the picture of a woman who was small in stature, but a giant among women and men.

Ransby, in tremendous detail, introduces the world to Ella Baker in ways that mainstream education wholly ignores. From her well-guarded personal life to her very public organizing, we meet a woman who gave her everything to an awe-inspiring vision of a more just and democratic society. Baker was propelled by what she saw we could be while at the same time giving equal energy to the path that would help us get there. For her the means was just as important as the end and you couldn’t fight for equality in the public sphere and sanction discrimination and ill-treatment behind closed doors. Her willingness to speak up and challenge the “men of the movement” didn’t make her a favorite in certain circles. She had her run-ins with the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and other groups because she did not go along with the prescribed gender role for women during that day and would not just “stay in her place”.

She created her own place – not in the narrow confines of a “civil rights” activist, but Ransby’s brilliant book reveals Baker as an irreplaceable figure in the larger Black Freedom Movement. While the NAACP and SCLC placed the legislature and judiciary as the preferred target for social change, Baker’s life was dedicated to organizing and empowering “everyday people” to be the change. Ms. Baker believed that the principal issue was bigger than new and different laws in the existing governing structure. She fought for self-determination for the poor and people of color. She didn’t chase after the politicians. She sat on country porches and rode down dusty roads with the people – listening to them articulate, define, and direct where the movement could or should go.

While she could have rightly demanded the spotlight and allowed her oratorical skills to shine, she seemed to prefer the less visible, but immensely critical roles behind the curtain. She helped empower others, drew connections to parallel movements, and practiced the art of asking the right questions. In addition, she mentored and nurtured many who grew to become defining figures in the Human Rights Struggle. As you turn each page, you’ll likely bump into a name you know or a name you need to know and read how Ella Baker touched their lives.

All 374 pages of Ransby’s book are packed with the finer, lesser-known stories and details of this pivotal figure and the movement she helped create. The many awards conferred upon this book is clear evidence of the literary skill of the author and her meticulous research in providing this important biography. Those who read this book – no doubt are better human beings by the time they turn the last page.

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“All the problems started when they took prayer out of the schools!”

Perhaps you have heard people voice this statement when trying to explain the problems of public education within the Afrikan in America context. Perhaps it’s a statement that you have expressed or believe yourself. While it’s debatable that the prohibition against prayer was the downfall of public schools, it’s a certainty that the Supreme Court’s ruling against coercive public school-prayer and Bible reading was a turning point in American public education.

And that turning point took place in Baltimore City, Maryland. More specifically, it took place at Woodbourne Jr. High School which eventually became Chinquapin Middle School. The historical record reveals the following:

In 1960, another law suit was filed against the city school system which also would be nationally historic. Madalyn Murray filed a lawsuit in which she asserted that it was unconstitutional for her son William to be required to participate in Bible readings at Baltimore public schools. In this litigation, she claimed that her son’s refusal to partake in the Bible readings, at the Woodbourne Jr. High School (now Chinquapin Middle school), had resulted in violence being directed against him by classmates, and that administrators overlooked it (after his conversion to Christianity, William publicly stated that these were fraudulent assertions). In 1963, this suit (amalgamated with the similar “Abington School District v. Schempp”) reached the United States Supreme Court, which voted 8-1 in her favor, effectively banning coercive public school prayer and Bible-reading at public schools in Baltimore and the United States.[SOURCE]

This school not only holds importance in the historical sense, but in the culture of the people of Baltimore it had a special place as well. For many, Chinquapin Middle School was probably best known for its dramatic presentations, performances, and musical concerts; a tradition that continued even up until last year.

However, with today being the first day of school in Baltimore City, the first revelation of the academic year is that historic Chinquapin Middle School is no more. Dr. Andres Alonso, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools, along with the School Board decided earlier this year to close the school and give the building to an operator from Anne Arundel County. Despite little significant input from the community and a decision characterized by a school CEO described as “overbearingly authoritarian” by a national report, the move to close Chinquapin was championed by the power brokers of Baltimore over the objections of the people who live in the neighborhood of the school. (Just another example of how we don’t control the institutions in our own communities!)

It will likely be a halting site for some to walk past the building and still see the outline of the word “Chinquapin” above the door. With time the outline will likely wear away, but the new name won’t. Baltimore IT Academy has a new operator from a different county, new staff, new administrators, and a new culture which Alonso and his board believe will improve the educational outcomes for the students. That is yet to be seen.

Though they’ve scrubbed the name and scrapped the history of this school’s place in the ethos of Baltimore (Chinquapin Middle has even been deleted from Wikipedia already!); may the People’s History of Baltimore City record in one of its chapters the courageous actions of everyday people who stood up when their schools were being closed down and demanded that their voice be heard – even if not heeded.

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When I caught wind of the state’s latest plans to build this prison for youth as well as a prison for women in Baltimore City; I rattled off an open letter to Delegate Keith Haynes who sits on the House Appropriations Committee. I couldn’t believe that in the middle of a recession, the state of Maryland found more than $100 million to lock up Black youth in Baltimore. It’s common knowledge in this city and many others that when it comes to prisons – if they build it, they will fill it.

Persons all over Baltimore and Maryland have been pressuring the Governor to reconsider the planned prison. Back in March of this year, the Baltimore Algebra Project led a group of hundreds of their peers and adult allies in a march on “Baby Bookings” – a juvenile detention center near downtown Baltimore.

While the adults that I’ve been debating on Facebook have resigned themselves to the eventuality of this prison being built, the youth of Baltimore have organized themselves and their adult allies and are fighting against this criminal policy.

Today, I received word that the plans for the construction of this prison have been temporarily delayed. Governor Martin O’Malley’s Deputy Chief of Staff sent out this letter saying that they will not move forward on the construction of the prison until they have a chance to complete the population analysis. Construction bids on this facility were slated to be awarded in mid-September. That won’t happen now.

This is a small victory for those working to halt this sinister plan from the state of Maryland. However, I am not ignorant to the political realities that made this possible. Governor Martin O’Malley is currently running for re-election and he needs the Black vote. To begin construction on a prison for Black youth in the final stretch of election season would likely create a dangerous liability to his campaign and he doesn’t want to be challenged on this on the campaign trail. I’m predicting that he’s burying his prison plan for now and will resurrect it after the election or late enough so it won’t make much difference at the voting booth. Burying it will also help provide cover for many of his political lackeys who are also running for re-election.

It’ll be up to those of us working to halt this prison to keep the pressure on, raise awareness in the community, and make it one of the deciding factors for people who are trying to make up their minds about who to vote for. Ideally, we need to get people to a place where we can collectively back Governor Martin O’Malley into a corner and demand that he discard plans for this prison and divert the $104 million to mentoring, education in Baltimore, (maybe the construction of a new school), youth jobs, etc. or else he will not have our vote.

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From my view, the Healthy Food Revolution must be concerned with a new social arrangement as it relates to healthy food and people of color and the poor. I believe it would be a disservice to the movement to seek to remove agri-business as the overseer of food production/delivery in under-served communities only to replace them with benevolent, White, urban farmers who will assume the role of the indispensable bridge to healthy food.

This approach will help produce a new social arrangement that will not only provide vitality to the healthy food movement, but will also give it greater credibility as a true revolution and not just a re-formation of an old social arrangement of control.

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I was in my first year of pastoring sitting at a Christian convention meeting at a West Baltimore church. The meeting portion of the mid-day program had just come to an end and the worship experience had just begun. The preacher was introduced and he rose to start out on his sermon for the dwindling faithful few who who had gathered to hear a Word from the Lord.

I was sitting in the rear of the church (a secret treat that many pastor’s enjoy) taking it all in when my cell phone rang. I answered and the voice on the other line said, “Pastor, come quick. One of our members is dying.”

I rushed out into the hall of the church and was told the name of the member who was the center of concern. I rushed out to the parking lot, jumped in my car and began hurriedly making my way through downtown Baltimore during lunch hour traffic to get to the Emergency Room of a hospital in East Baltimore.

While swerving in and out of traffic, I realized that while rushing to the scene, I didn’t know what to do once I arrived. I panicked and instinctively called my father. My Dad has been pastoring for 24 years and the foundational knowledge that I have as it relates to what it means to be a pastor comes from him. Dad picked up his cell and I began telling him the situation that I was rushing to. I didn’t have time to ease into the inquiry or relay my question in a roundabout way so as to maintain the illusion of poise. The question just came out.

“Dad, what do I do?”

He calmly began walking me through step-by-step what I should do while standing at the deathbed of one of the members of the church. Pulling from more than two decades of experience, he instructed and assured me that I was well able to be pastor even in the face of death. Near the end of our conversation, I was screeching into the parking lot of the hospital. We hung up and seeing the Chairman of our Deacon Board standing at the entrance of the Emergency Room, I marched with fragile confidence into the room where the Death Angel was threatening.

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked in. But there she was. Laying on the bed, conscious, in obvious pain. I reached for her hand and she grabbed mine – squeezing with a strength that I did not imagine a dying woman to have. I mumbled and tripped over words of encouragement. To those standing around, I asked the usual, time-filling questions about the diagnosis and the doctors. I looked at the monitors in the room – listening to the beeps of alien machinery and tried with awkward gaze to understand what they meant. I thought I would read some scriptures, but in a strange way scripture didn’t seem adequate for the setting.

(It’s difficult to explain it, but sometimes when I’m face to face with a traumatic experience, the reading of scripture can feel like a hollow exercise.)

So I sat. I held her hand. I spoke with those standing around and I waited. At some point, the prognosis improved and it was clear that though my sister was not out of the woods, death would be delayed until another future time. I called the family into the small room. We gathered in a circle and I led us in a word of prayer.

I left out of the hospital relieved that things went as well as they did, but at the same time deeply aware of my inadequacy and lack of confidence as it relates to ministering to the dying and their grief-stricken family while sojourning together through the valley of the shadow of death.

I’ve made many more hospital visits and officiated many more funerals since then, but still I’m purposing to grow stronger in facing the fact of death for myself and others.

I started reading a book entitled The Art of Dying: Living Fully Into The Life To Come by Rob Moll earlier this year. It has helped me in ways that I could never have imagined from just looking at the simplistic cover. Moll rightly raises the issue that many in America have similar discomfort as it relates to death because death has been moved from our view. We don’t deal with it. We don’t have to. We have professionals who deal with that. We pay people to deal with death. We’ve outsourced the sacred responsibility of serving our loved ones in death. It’s just something that we don’t want to touch. As Moll says, we don’t “live in the light of our mortality, often our busy lives don’t allow this reflection.”

But there was a time when death was closer. I still hear echoes of the old folks telling stories of family and friends who had died – not at the hospital, but at home. I hear my North Carolinian grandfather who was also a Bishop, praying over the church: “Thank you, Lord that last night our resting beds, didn’t become our cooling boards.” I still get invitations to preach at little churches out in “the country” who have regular remembrance of their members and family because the cemetery is out in the back of the church and not across town in a memorial park. I hear of a time when the old folks would go and view the body of the deceased which was on display in the living room of their home – not a funeral home.

But in the 21st century things are not this way. We don’t see death. We don’t touch it. We don’t reflect on it. And Moll says that this has an impact not just on the larger society, but also on the American Church.

I was shocked when I read Moll’s questioning of the church on whether we are “too pro-life”. He cited a study that researched “quality of death” scores. The study revealed that patients who received outside clergy visits had worse quality of death scores compared to those who did not. The research suggested that Christians were more likely to request aggressive treatments for their dying loved ones believing that God might work through it to provide divine healing. In the process of trying all the latest aggressive treatments, opportunities were missed to spend cherished moments with dying loved ones. He said that churches are not teaching people to die well. Instead we (both the church and larger society) are more focused on extending life – with less concern about the quality of life even if it is extended. Moll says, and I now agree – that there comes a time when Christians must “shift their focus from extending life to preparing to die.”

This book introduced me to the term “good death“. I have never in all my years put those two words together. But as he lays out in his book, it makes perfect sense that the church should not only be helping people to live good lives, but Christians have a responsibility as well to teach people how to have a “good death”. He says, “A death that doesn’t afford the opportunity for last words, for reconciliation, for repentance and for spiritual preparation for the next world is not a good death, according to traditional Christian teaching.”

This book not only provides theory and traditional Christian teaching, but it also provides practical advice that all of us – Christian or not – could stand to benefit from. It has helped me on my road to being a better pastor and I am looking to incorporate it into my church…especially the leadership who are often engaged in pastoral care along with me. The study guide questions in the rear of the book make this book a great candidate for any church’s Bible Study program.

But aside from its benefit to the Church, it has helped me personally earlier this year. One of my great-uncles died and I was blessed to be there at the hospital with my family as he was making his transition. As he was slipping away, I was in the waiting room reading this book. In it, I found the support that I was looking for. When we were urgently called back to his room, we stood around my uncle’s bed speaking words of love and appreciation. For the first time in my life, I watched someone die. And though there were many tears, much grief and heartache; I knew that when I saw my uncle take his last labored breath, that I had just seen a good man die a good death.

The Art of Dying by Rob Moll is a gift to us all.

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I still remember sitting in social studies classes of my youth and learning about Christopher Columbus – the “discoverer” of America, George Washington who “never told a lie”, Thomas Jefferson with his Declaration of Independence which conveniently excluded Africans from its purview, and Abraham Lincoln who “freed” the slaves because of his “commitment to social equity”.

The heroes of European Americans are being introduced to African American youth as standard knowledge for academic advancement. Conversely, the enemies of European Americans are cast in notorious light or altogether ignored. African students learn little to nothing about Gabriel Prosser, Nat Turner, David Walker, Touissant L’ouverture, Prince Hall, Queen Mother Moore, The Honorable Marcus Garvey, Ella Baker, Steve Biko, Assata Shakur, and so many more! Those Afrikan Ancestors that our children are introduced to (i.e. Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, etc.) are made into harmless caricatures whose words and actions are reduced to decontextualized soundbytes that don’t threaten existing popular sensibilities or power structures.

The seeds of self-hate are planted in the minds of African American youth as they sit in the European-American classroom. The overriding message of this indoctrination is that everyone great, remarkable, and worthy to be remembered is “White”. People of Color are at best footnotes who only have made marginal imprint on the pages of human history. Is it any wonder that many African American youth choose to “check out” of this system in various ways? While they may not be able to articulate it, many of them instinctively know that they are being exposed to a system that has the goal of miseducating them. For at least 12 years they are sitting under the tutelage of a foreign education system that left unchallenged will keep them psychologically, spiritually, and academically enslaved for their entire lives. Those who do not “check out” of this alien system can go on to gain “good grades,” but they’ll graduate with greater allegiance to the core beliefs, goals, and activities of the European-American community over anything that they might feel toward their own community.

African Americans in Baltimore (and many other cities around this country) surrender our greatest gift – our children – to a system that wasn’t designed for them and to people – many of them – who only view the students as a means to their next paycheck.

We send them off to the schoolhouse and leave it to chance that they’ll make it out alright.

With many other communities; they don’t take a chance when it comes to their children. It’s probably a negligible number of Jewish students in the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPS). Why? Because they know that the BCPS won’t shape their students into persons who possess confident knowledge of self and allegiance to their community standards and goals.

Take for instance Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School which runs from pre-school to 12th grade. This school proudly states that “its responsibility to the Jewish community is to educate generations of American Jews who are committed to Jewish practices and beliefs, knowledgeable about their heritage, and devoted to the Jewish community and the State of Israel.”

(Do me a favor. Read the above mission statement again, but this time where it says “Jewish” or “Jews” change the word to “African American” and where it says “State of Israel” change that to “the continent of Africa”.)

Or you can look at another school for 16-18 year old Jewish boys called Lev Shlomo. The school is for Jewish boys who have had difficulty in traditional school settings. It’s stated mission is to “assist teenagers to become productive, healthy, balanced, successful members of the Jewish community and society.”

Another example is the Shoshana S. Cardin High School. This independent high school describes its academic character by saying, “the overarching vision of The Cardin School is clearly unique for we enable our students to gain an integrated perspective between the traditional disciplines, and especially between Jewish Studies and General Studies. In many ways, this means learning to see the world through educated Jewish eyes“. It goes on to say, “we foster not only a broad intellectual perspective, but a deep and lasting sense of identity“.

And that is what is lacking in the Baltimore City Public School System – an educational setting that is both academically rigorous and equally concerned with instilling a sense of identity within the more than 70,000 African American students who are enrolled. This is why Black People should control the city school system…but not just any kind of “Black People” for the truth be told we have Black people on the City School Board and in City Hall, but many of those Black People are the kind that have already ingratiated themselves to Baltimore’s White Power Structure and have gone to great lengths to prove to the Power Structure that they will never say what need be said or do what need be done to stand in solidarity with their own community. They are appreciative puppets who’ve “gone along to get along” and feel they have too much to lose now by rocking the boat.

The Jews have their own schools in Baltimore to teach their children how to be good Jews. The Catholics have their own schools in Baltimore to teach their students how to be good Catholics. The Quakers have their own schools in Baltimore to instill in their students the values of Quakers.

WHERE ARE THE SCHOOLS IN BALTIMORE CONTROLLED BY BLACK PEOPLE THAT TEACH BLACK CHILDREN HOW TO BE HONORABLE AFRICANS?!

In a city that is nearly 65% African American and a school system that is nearly 90% African American:

Baltimore’s African American community and true allies need to read, study, organize, and execute an educational agenda that is worthy of our children.

The Great Ancestors and Elders of our community have already laid the groundwork. We just must familiarize ourselves with their analysis, critique, and contextualize for our times. Black People should control the Baltimore City Public School System. To suggest any other arrangement is to suggest that White People and their Power Structure know best as it relates to educating Black Children.

Black People who are unapologetically Black with a profound sense of self, have a demonstrated commitment to Black Children, an allegiance to the uplift of the Black Community, a global understanding of our place in the world as Africans, and possessive of communal credibility should control the school system that currently just warehouses Black bodies prepping them for prison, uninspired living, or an early grave.

This should not be an optional goal for our community. It is a fixture for every self-respecting group of people and we – people of African descent in Baltimore – should be no different in embracing the education of our children as one of our highest aims.

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However, that’s what African American students are likely to believe while matriculating through many of this nation’s public schools. Their miseducation instills in them the view that they are an inferior people whose historical heritage starts in slavery. Their miseducation proliferates while at the same time planting within them the seeds of white supremacy.

Many African American students are suited to assimilate to this poisonous program and press on to graduate anyhow. However, without focused intervention many of them -even with degrees – are rendered useless to the uplift of their community. Other students are blessed along their academic journey with African American teachers in the system who understand the fundamental flaws of the European-American education system and attempt to shield and/or support African American students who are marching like sheep to the slaughter. The majority of African American students, however, in public schools across the country struggle tremendously and many of them drop out and don’t make it to graduation day.

Baltimore City’s Public School System (BCPSS) has had its share of negative spotlight on its inability to inspire all of its students to personal and academic excellence. According to the BCPSS website, last year nearly 40% of seniors did not graduate! Last year’s high non-graduation rate is not an anomaly. This has been the average (if not higher) of non-graduates from Baltimore City Public Schools for the past ten years easily! Add to that percentage the more than 9,000 students who have dropped out of school since 2006 and you get a pretty good picture of the state of emergency that our community is in.

Where do thousands of high school drop outs and non-graduates go every year? They don’t just disappear. Where do you think they end up? And who benefits from this arrangement?

Some of them go to work and without a high school degree, they likely end up in low-paying, dead-end jobs. Some engage in self and community-destructive behaviors like the underground economy of Baltimore – the drug trade. Some of them end up caught up in the school-to-prison pipeline which our city and state government keeps well-oiled. Incarcerating African American youth is big business in Baltimore and a failing school system helps to ensure that business is booming. It’s booming so much that Governor Martin O’Malley is pushing a plan to build a new $100 million dollar youth jail in East Baltimore slated to begin construction this Fall.

It is criminal that the youth of Baltimore are getting the unrequested gift of a new prison from “their” Governor (in cooperation with Mayor Rawlings-Blake and other city legislators) in a time when the city hasn’t seen a new school built in nearly 30 years or more!

Our community is in a state of emergency! If anywhere near half of city students don’t graduate every school year for a decade or more, you have a recipe for the rapid destruction of our community. I say “our” community – speaking of the African American community because our children make up the majority of the school system.

Nearly 90% of students enrolled in Baltimore City Public Schools are African American children. Despite this fact, African Americans do not control the school system. Some might ask why does control matter? Well, I believe that all children are capable of learning and achieving. African American students are no different. They are born with the God-given ability to learn and grow like all other children. If they were born with the raw potential and its not nurtured in the classroom, I don’t blame the students. (though that’s pretty popular with some scapegoating, cowardly, adults). THE CHILDREN ARE NOT THE PROBLEM!

Does the home have some responsibility? Sure it does, but don’t stop there. Do teachers share some responsibility? According to this MD State Dept. of Education Report which speaks of cultural disconnects, sure they do, but don’t stop there. Does Administration have responsibility? Sure it does, but keep going.

Once you move past all of the people involved, I believe that the fundamental issue regarding the underachievement of our students in Baltimore, centers on a school system that was never designed to foster the holistic development of African American children.

People, in the grand scheme of things, are temporary actors on the stage of life. We move relatively quickly from the womb to the tomb. The systems of our world, however, have a longer lifespan and built-in resistance to substantive reform.

As far back as the mid-1960′s, African American students in the Baltimore City Public System have been hampered by a system philosophy which believes that education is a generic and universal package that fits every student regardless of their particular makeup. So since the years following the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision which was the precursor to the integration of public schools in this country; African American students have been filing into European-American school systems with contentious results at best. In fact, a report by Dr. Orlando F. Furno, research director of the Baltimore City Public School System at the time, revealed that in the immediate years following racial integration in Baltimore’s public schools, the IQ scores of Black students was found to be declining while the IQ scores of White students was increasing. [The report was referenced on the BCPS website, but after initial publication of this article, it mysteriously disappeared. You can find a reference to this report on page 73 at this link.]

Furno suggested that the decline in Black IQ’s was a result of the inferior schools that the Black students came from. However, I suspect a causality that points in the opposite direction.

The season of social and educational reform in Baltimore surrounding the 50′s and 60′s was based on the assumption that just putting African American students in the same classroom with European-American students would produce the same result – an educated student properly prepared for the next stages of her or his life and equipped with a sound sense of self. This assumption willfully ignored the reality that while the students – both Black and White – were (and are) physiologically very similar; they come from two distinct cultural realities. In the years following the 50′s in Baltimore and many other cities, “White flight” began which saw European-Americans heading for the suburbs leaving the city and the school system behind. By 1960, the Baltimore City Public School System’s student population was for the first time ever, majority African American.

But remember what I said about systems. Unlike people, systems tend to persevere. And though the European-Americans left the schools in Baltimore creating a de facto segregation environment that persists to this day, the educational system that they created initially for the holistic development of their children was left behind and was now filled with Black Children.

What do you get when you take the children of one cultural group and place them in an educational environment that was not designed for them – and in fact was constructed by the mentality, philosophies, historical perspective, and world view of their community’s oppressors?

That’s what I’ll begin to discuss in Part 2 of this series.

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