by Tavis Smiley
The day I left the front porch of my abusive guardian’s house is probably the single most important and significant day in my life. It started me on a journey to find something better. I was young at the time, but God moved me to make a change, so I ran away from home. I use the word home loosely because there was really nothing homey about the place where I lived or the people I lived with. It was merely a roof over my head. I was never really welcome there.
After my stay in the hospital, I became a ward of the state of Indiana. I spent eight years in one foster home and two years in another. By the time I was a young man I was carrying a great deal of emotional baggage. I was filled with feelings of rage, fear, and anger. I was about to be sent off to the Family Children’s Center for orphans when I was rescued by my cousin.
My cousin, whom I affectionately called my aunt, opened up her home to me and welcomed me in. She was a single mother living in a small three-bedroom, one-bath house with five daughters. My cousin, may her soul rest in peace, gave me the mother’s love that I so badly needed.
At the age of fourteen, after having finally achieved some stability in my life, I tried concentrating on school. This was easier said than done, however. Emotionally, I was so unstable and so confused that it was difficult to focus on school. Living in a small house with six people was tough. We were on public assistance and often didn’t have enough money to pay the bills. We would boil water in order to take a hot bath and had to wash our clothes at the Laundromat. But we all loved one another.
During my senior year of high school, everyone was talking about going to college. I didn’t have a clue about going to college and doubted that I could get admitted, much less succeed there. I was a very average student and hadn’t even taken the SAT. Besides, in the course of the school year I had partied a lot. But God allowed another pivotal person to enter my life.
Charles Martin Sr. was the executive director of the South Bend YMCA and often held parties for the local middle and high school students. In addition, he had developed a number of other programs to try to keep kids out of trouble and headed in the right direction. One night at one of these parties he approached me and asked, “What are you going to do after you graduate from high school?” I told him I thought I would just get a job and work somewhere. He asked me if I had considered college, and of course my response was no.
Noting my confusion, he promptly scheduled several counseling appointments with me where he took the time to discuss college and lay out a plan of achievement for me. He signed me up to take the SAT and helped me enroll in a summer precollege program at Indiana University. A short time later, I was admitted to the school!
For my first two years of college, Mr. Martin acted as a mentor, counselor, and father figure for me. He helped me to choose classes and fill out financial aid papers, and he arranged transportation to and from my home to the school. He also inspired me to become a member of the great fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi.
These events set off a chain reaction of positive experiences for me and allowed me to rise from the ashes of my circumstances and contribute to the uplifting of my people, instead of becoming a statistic. The people God placed in my life—my late cousin Sedalia and the late Charles Martin Sr.—allowed me to believe in the possibilities of man, and in the power of love!
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES
Tracy Andrus
In 1988–89, while living in Shreveport, Louisiana, and owning a small company called Consumer Financial Services, I got into trouble with the law. I had purchased a fine home and numerous automobiles and was living the life of an unsaved man. Prior to my success, I had been a very devout Christian, working faithfully in the church. I had even confessed my calling to preach the gospel.
When huge amounts of money started to pour into my business, I turned my back on God and my family and began to live a very immoral lifestyle. I had money, women, fame, and fortune. I was on television three or four times a day doing my commercials. I had billboards on the side of the road with my picture on it. I was the man and I knew it.
One day, while vacationing in Florida, I called my secretary to ask her to wire me a few hundred dollars because I had decided to take a cruise. She informed me that my account was very low and the money I needed was not available. When I returned to Shreveport, I discovered that as a result of my lavish lifestyle, I had neglected to stay on top of my business and my deposits were getting smaller and smaller. Soon, I was struggling with the lease payment for my office, not to mention my four automobile notes and the mortgage on my new home.
In an effort to avoid being embarrassed, I deposited a phony $4,000 business check in my personal account to help me meet my financial obligations, and it worked! Somehow, I was able to raise the money to put back in my account before a fuss was made.
That transaction became the beginning of my end. This practice of opening up numerous accounts, depositing checks that you know are not good, and receiving money back is called check kiting. Having discovered how to work the process, when things got tight financially I started floating checks all over the place. Before I realized it, I had obtained $38,000 from this fraudulent process, and the banks and the police were looking for me!
I tried everything I could to get this money back to the banks, including commingling funds of my clients with my personal money. I was desperate, willing to do anything! When the authorities in Shreveport tried to arrest me, I left Louisiana and took my check kiting to the state of Texas, where I kited for approximately $18,000. Looking back, I realize that all of this money did me no good, because when the police did arrest me, my bond would be anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000. It turns out I was giving most of the money to the bail bondsman and digging myself deeper and deeper into debt and trouble.
Soon I was on TV on every station without having to pay for it. I made headline news and was on the ten-most-wanted list.
When the smoke cleared, I was facing felony charges in Shreveport and Bossier City, Louisiana. I was also facing felony charges in Texarkana and Houston, Texas. I knew I was in serious trouble. I didn’t deny doing any of what I had been accused of doing. In fact, I pleaded guilty to it all. I was wrong and I knew it. If they had given me a hundred years in prison, I would have had to accept my punishment and do my time, because I was as guilty as sin.
When the time came for me to appear in court, the judge sentenced me to six years on all seven counts that I was charged with, but I was blessed because he ordered that the sentences run concurrently—which, in essence, amounted to one six-year sentence. When I went to Bossier City to be sentenced, the judge there sentenced me to six years at hard labor and ordered that the sentence also run concurrently with the Shreveport sentence. The same thing happened when I appeared for sentencing in Texarkana and in Houston—the judge in each of those cities sentenced me to three years at hard labor and ordered that the sentences run concurrently with the other sentences that I was serving.
Of course, I knew that none of this happened by coincidence. I believed it was God giving me a second chance, and I wanted to do my best to take advantage of this opportunity.
I was sent to Wade Correctional Center in Homer, Louisiana, where I served as an inmate lawyer assisting other inmates with their legal concerns. I found favor with the warden and the other inmates and was made a trusty and moved to the honor dorm. I lived there for the next two and a half years, until I was sent to a halfway house.
While in the halfway house, I met the sheriff, and he helped me tremendously. Soon I was allowed to attend church, and I met the Reverend Huey P. Lawson, who served as a role model and employer for me during my final days at the halfway house.
Once I was released from prison, Reverend Lawson, who owned a real estate company, allowed me to work for him. Despite a law in Louisiana saying that ex-felons cannot hold a real estate license, I appeared before the real estate board and explained my situation, stating that I was out of prison and felt that I had paid my debt to society. At this poi
nt in my life, I wanted to provide an honest and decent living for my family. With the help of the Lord, they voted unanimously to allow me to sell real estate if I could pass the test—and I did! I knew God was still working in my life.
Later, I attempted to look for a more stable source of employment and became a substitute teacher in Rapides Parish. When I took the exam to become a teacher’s aide, I passed it. Mr. Julius Patrick, who was the principal of Reed Avenue Elementary School and the mayor of Boyce, Louisiana, became my boss, my father, my advisor, my friend, and my tutor for the next five years. I will love and remember him the rest of my life.
Mr. Patrick encouraged me to rise! He never said it in quite these words, but when he spoke to me, everything about him said to me that even though I might have lost a battle, I had not lost the war. “Keep fighting,” he would say, “and stay focused; you can do it!” He believed in me, and his encouragement made me want to achieve and become even more successful. I had the support of my wife, children, mother, and other family, and somehow I knew that I could beat the odds. I was down, but I was not out.
I was able to enroll in Louisiana College, in Pineville, in the spring of 1996 thanks to the president of the college, Dr. Robert Lynn, who arranged to have my old school loans paid off by alumni of the college. I majored in criminal justice and religious education.
In 1999, I received my associate’s degree in criminal justice, and in 2000 I received my bachelor of science in criminal justice. I resigned from my teacher’s aide position at Reed Avenue Elementary and enrolled at the University of Louisiana at Monroe in the master’s degree program. While there, I met another positive Black role model. Mr. Roy N. Shelling hired me as a full-time third-grade teacher at Lincoln Elementary School. It was my first job as a full-time teacher. I knew that God was working mightily in my life.
In August of 2001, I graduated from the University of Louisiana at Monroe with a master’s degree in criminal justice. I then sent in an application to the new juvenile justice Ph.D. program, the only one of its kind in the nation, located at Prairie View A&M University, in Prairie View, Texas. Shortly I received a call from Dr. Frank Williams, who informed me that I had been accepted into the program! I laughed out loud and thanked the Lord! I recognized that without Him none of this would have been possible. He had given me the faith to try. I kept knocking, and he kept opening up the doors.
Today, I am a Ph.D. student at Prairie View University teaching Introduction to Criminal Justice to college students. I have worked as a research assistant for two of the most brilliant people I know. I hope to receive my Ph.D. within the next two years. The God I serve has made it possible that men like me can transform their lives from prison to professorship. With the help of the Lord, I was able to overcome.
PERSISTENCE OVERRIDES RESISTANCE
Joylyn Wright
I must have read the letter at least one hundred times. I nearly fainted when I read the first line: I am pleased to inform you that your application for admission to the Thomas M. Cooley Law School has been accepted after review by the Faculty Admissions Committee. Yes, I understand that millions of people receive letters like this every year, so why did I nearly go comatose when I read it? Well, maybe because this moment had been in the making for two long, frustrating years, and it all started with me falling asleep at my desk.
I was working at an insurance company as an administrative assistant. The job was very uneventful, and so was the pay. Many days I found myself surfing the Internet (on the down low, of course) searching for other jobs. I felt like my youthful years were flying away, and I wasn’t doing anything constructive, much less having any fun. One day, a friend of mine was applying to graduate school and asked if I would help her write her personal statement.
When I finished the statement, I found myself with no work to do and sitting in my cubicle staring at a blank computer screen. Suddenly, without warning, I just felt my head get heavier and heavier. Luckily, I jerked myself awake before anyone noticed.
It was then that I experienced an epiphany. I asked myself, was this the way I wanted to spend the rest of my life? Working in a mindless job, with terrible pay, no life, and no purpose? Did I want to wake up every morning to a going-nowhere job just to pay the bills and after twenty-plus years find myself being escorted out the door with a gold watch and a one-way ticket to that financially precarious state of employment called early retirement? Well, my answer was an overwhelming no, and at that moment I decided it was time to make something of my life.
I had known what I wanted to do with my life since I was sixteen years old. I wanted to be a lawyer! Years before, I’d tried to get into law school; I even took the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) twice. However, I was so disappointed with my scores that I buried them in a drawer in my old bedroom in Bonneau, South Carolina, and abandoned my dream for three years. I look back on this time as if I was mentally asleep. However, when I woke up from my little nap I realized it was time to take the risk of a lifetime and fight for my dreams.
I had no idea that I was in for one of the hardest fights of my life.
I started applying to law schools like a madwoman. Give me a form, and I would fill it out; I didn’t care where the school was located! I never thought about how I was going to get there, how I was going to pay for it, or even if I had a chance of getting in. I was on a mission to apply anywhere I could. By the end, I had applied to approximately thirteen schools. I thought for sure I would be accepted by someone; after all, what were the chances of my being turned down by all thirteen schools? Well, my chances were excellent, because that is exactly what happened. All thirteen schools had denied my application!
I had never felt so rejected in my entire life. One by one the rejection letters came with their pleasantries: We have reviewed your application for admission, and unfortunately, we cannot offer you admission into our incoming class…. Thank you for your interest in our school…. At first, I was defiant. Every time a school rejected me, I would just apply to another one, and another one, and another one. I refused to be ignored. However, by the eighth letter, I was beaten and broke! Applying to law school was expensive. I cried night after night, pleading with God to have mercy on me and give me one acceptance letter, but it never came.
By May 2000, I was through with the idea of attending law school. I was tired of the disappointment and the rejections. I tried to comfort myself by saying that I did my best, so I could convince myself I had nothing to be ashamed of. Finally, I decided that I would just stay at the insurance company and work toward my gold watch.
But, despite my efforts to forget about law school, I simply could not. I kept hearing, “All things are possible with God.” So, after a few weeks of recovery from the onslaught of rejection letters, I decided to begin the application process again. But this time, it would be different. This time I went to students, attorneys, and school administrators and asked what I needed to do to get into law school. I went to a law school forum and met with recruiters, bought a book on how to apply to law school, and called some of the schools that had turned me down and asked why they hadn’t accepted me.
With motivation from a small group of friends and family who had believed in me, I took the LSAT for the third time. I studied every day. I even brought the study guide to work and studied during my lunch break and at my desk when my workload was slow. Luckily, God blessed me with an understanding boss who never gave me a hard time about it.
Now, it was time to reapply! I followed the book to the letter. I wrote the best personal statement I had ever written, or so I thought. I had several people, including an English instructor, review my statement, and I asked all the right people for letters of recommendations. My applications that year were perfect! I ended up applying to twenty-four schools, including some of the schools that had denied me the year before. I thought no one could turn down this great application. I was certain that I would get in somewhere!
However, again I was wrong. This time twenty-f
our schools sent twenty-four rejection letters. It was the year 2000 all over again! Coincidentally, I was also let go from my job and had a car accident. I was devastated.
Several people suggested to me that “perhaps God does not want this for you” or “you most likely won’t ever get into law school with those grades.” I was ready to believe them. Then one night, while in my apartment feeling sorry for myself, I found a book I had purchased at a book fair a year earlier. It was a small volume with quotes of wisdom from successful African Americans. While reading it, I came across a quote that changed my entire outlook on school. It read, “I wasn’t the ‘did everything right and got into medical school’ type person. My motto became persistence overrides resistance.”
For me, it was as if someone had turned on a light. For the first time in my life, I felt that there was someone who understood what I was going through, because I obviously wasn’t the did-everything-right-and-got-into-law-school type of person. The quote reminded me about an example from the Bible, of a man who knocked on his friend’s door and asked for food late at night. Jesus said that the friend gave the man food not because he was a friend but because he saw the man’s need through his persistence. The lesson was that we needed to have the same persistence when approaching God or any other situation. I immediately had hope again, but most importantly, my faith was restored.
By the fall of 2001, I approached law school with a different perspective. This time I didn’t rely on the “right people” or the “perfect personal statement” or anything I did, because none of these things worked. This time, I relied on one thing … God! My mother had always told me to put God first in whatever I did, but I’d forgotten that. I’d put so-called important people and my abilities first, which, I believe, is why nothing had happened. So I simply braced myself, turned the situation over to God, and allowed Him to do the rest.