NFL Players Being Led By Successful Black Lawyer

DeMaurice Smith, a partner with powerful Washington law firm Patton Boggs, was recently named Executive Director of the NFL Players Association, the union representing all players in the most-lucrative league in professional sports. Smith is a Washington, D.C., native and spent many years in the D.C. legal system after graduating from the University of Virginia's law school in 1989. He has close ties to Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama and is expected to bring a fresh perspective and grounded leadership to the union during a potentially tumultuous time as the NFL's owners and players have yet to reach a contract agreement past 2009, known as a Collective Bargaining Agreement. Aside from his legal work, Smith is also on the Board of Directors for the Good Samaritan Foundation, a D.C.-based organization co-founded by former Washington Redskins player and Hall of Famer Art Monk to assist in fulfilling the educational and social needs of inner city youth.

A Role Model for Young Men and Women Alike

When CNN's Jack Cafferty is raving about you, you know something must be going right for you. That's Michelle Obama these days. Sure, her husband, Barack, became the first Black man to become President of the United States with a awe-inspiring mix of composure, charisma and political savvy, but it's his wife who has wowed Washington with everything from her hospitality to her fashion sense. This is a real role model if I've ever seen one.

A woman who knows her strengths as an individual and professional - she was a senior official at the University of Chicago before going on hiatus to campaign for her husband - and, more importantly, knows the power that comes from her current job as First Lady. Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan each had her own areas of focus and pet projects, but from Michelle we get the sense that the role of First Lady has never been so broad and inspiring. She's a mother of two young daughters, but she's also an adviser to her husband, not far removed from being a state senator in Illinois.

Real Role Models doesn't profile the First Lady, nor any other famous Black professionals, but it goes without saying that she is amongst a select group of nationally-captivating people, the kind of person who not only inspires young black girls, but also black women and not only black women, but women in general. And, I know I'm not the only man who watches her in admiration and awe. Wondering how Barack ever got so lucky. Being her husband, not the president, has to be the most important job in his life.

Secret to Steelers Coach Tomlin's Success: Take Notes

Secret to Steelers Coach Tomlin's Success: Take Notes
By JUDY BATTISTA
The New York Times
January 26, 2009

TAMPA, Fla. — Sometimes in the off-season, he creeps down to the basement in the middle of the night and pulls an old Franklin Planner from the stacks. Pittsburgh Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin — reluctant intellectual — goes back to school then, flipping through the meticulous notes he has kept since he was a youngster, line after line bringing back the memories of what he did in a practice, of how a coach handled a wayward player, of the goals he hoped to accomplish that season.

For years, Tomlin tried to shield his smarts from view. When the “My Child is an Honor Roll Student” bumper stickers arrived in the mail, Tomlin threw them in the garbage before his mother could put them on the car. It was weird, he thought, when his friends first realized in 11th grade that he had gotten straight A’s. Even at William and Mary, an elite college just a few dozen miles from his home in Newport News, Va., he playfully mocked one of his best friends as Poem Boy, only to quote Robert Frost in his news conference after the Steelers won the American Football Conference championship last week.

But those notes in the basement serve as a road map of Tomlin’s meteoric career rise and inform his decisions still. The 1996 volume is a particular favorite because Tomlin was a graduate assistant at the University of Memphis, with the ideal fly-on-the-wall vantage point to observe coaches while bearing few responsibilities. Nobody, save perhaps Tomlin himself, could have imagined that a dozen years later — only two years after he met much of the N.F.L. while pushing his baby’s stroller through the league’s annual meeting — Tomlin would become the youngest Super Bowl head coach in league history.

“Shocked is not a word that I would use,” Tomlin, 36, said of landing the Steelers job in the first place. “I’ve always been extremely competitive. I’m a big dreamer, I guess. I’ve been known to be pushy.”

Tomlin has never lacked for self-assurance. When he told his mother he was forsaking law school to take his first $12,000-a-year coaching job — a decision she thought was insane — he told her coolly that he had a plan. Tomlin’s father, Ed, played in the Canadian Football League, but Tomlin had little relationship with him after his parents separated when he was a baby.

The lure of football came, instead, from neighborhood coaches. Athletics were viewed as a way out of a sometimes difficult neighborhood, Tomlin said, so the coaches became the disciplinarians, the guidance counselors. He wanted to be among them, even if he didn’t need sports to escape. He was a wisp of a high school wide receiver, but he was also quietly stowing recruiting letters from Ivy League programs.

Tomlin wanted to be known as a jock then, not a smart kid, something he knows sounds silly now. But perhaps that was why he could always command a room, able to make the biology students and the offensive linemen equally comfortable.

“He would walk through the door at 10 o’clock at night and light up the room,” said Pete Tsipas, the owner of Paul’s Deli, a student hangout at William and Mary where Tomlin worked the door. “Fifteen years later, he still knows everybody’s name.”

At William and Mary, Tomlin bulked up and became a downfield receiving threat, establishing a team record by averaging 20.2 yards a catch. But football also provided Tomlin an opportunity for the perfect melding of the academic and athletic, and perhaps the underpinnings of his coaching style: he memorized his opponents’ biographies, the better to trash-talk them. Tomlin calls himself a flatliner now, projecting only cool dressed in black on the Steelers’ sideline. But back then, he was emotional — even a little cocky.

“Confidence was never a problem with Mike,” said Minnesota Vikings safety Darren Sharper, a college teammate who was later coached by Tomlin when he was the Vikings’ defensive coordinator. “He would talk trash not only to players, but to coaches. It was a comedy every day. He is always ready to go, trying to get guys to compete.”

Tomlin and his friend and fellow receiver Terry Hammons were fans of NFL Films, and in one they noticed that the great Cleveland running back Jim Brown behaved oddly near the sidelines before games, to unnerve opponents.

“We had such delusions of our own grandeur, we would do these weird drills, we’d get dressed up to our waist, go out with our shirts off, do some push-ups and then start doing ball drills,” said Hammons, who was Poem Boy and is now a lawyer in London.

Hammons calls Tomlin socially intelligent, possessing a knack for knowing what spurs others on. He was the guy singing “It’s a Beautiful Morning” in the bitter cold of an off-season workout. And years later, after Steelers running back Willie Parker complained about play-calling, Tomlin noted in a news conference that Parker wasn’t complaining last season, when he led the league in rushing for most of the year. The zinger delivered, Tomlin made Parker a game captain a few days later.

In college, Tomlin became a voracious student of the voluminous William and Mary playbook and game film, and he offered his suggestions to Coach Jimmye Laycock. For all his chattiness on the field, Tomlin was a deliberate thinker, given, a sociology professor said, to hanging back in an argument so he could analyze data — the thoughtful approach he takes today when talking to reporters.

From his first coaching job, with the wide receivers at Virginia Military Institute, the notebooks filled up quickly, Tomlin’s career buoyed by his amalgamation of smarts and swagger. At the University of Cincinnati — his fifth career stop in five years — the secondary he took over went from being ranked 111th in the nation in pass defense to 61st in his first season. Tony Dungy and Monte Kiffin, then coaching in Tampa Bay, heard about him while they were looking for a defensive backs coach.

After putting Tomlin through a 15-hour interview, Kiffin called the veteran safety John Lynch to tell him about Tomlin’s preparedness and poise, about Tomlin’s attention to technique and his plans for motivation. “Monte said, ‘I have good news and bad news,’ ” Lynch recalled. “He said, ‘I got a heck of a secondary coach.’ I said, ‘What’s the bad news?’ ‘You’re a year older than him.’ ”

Tomlin, then 28, was used to the uneasiness his youth created. When the Buccaneers held a brief minicamp early in Tomlin’s tenure, he had known the players for two weeks. But he presented Lynch, a perennial All-Pro, a tape of 75 plays he thought he could improve on from the year before.

“At first, I thought, What’s up with this guy?” Lynch said. “But then I started reading the detail. He’d show a play, then have a long paragraph about what he thought I could do better. I learned a lot from him right away. That sold me on him.”

The Steelers were a veteran team one season removed from a Super Bowl title when Tomlin got the job Jan. 22, 2007, at age 34. The players were watching him closely. Tomlin ran an intentionally savage training camp to make the point that he was in charge and to help him determine the hardest workers.

Now the Steelers credit him for delegating authority to his assistants, rather than interfering with play-calling, and for easing up on some players as he has grown more comfortable with them.

“I like the head-scratching,” Tomlin said. “I go out of my way to not put them at ease. There’s nothing wrong with being in a permanent state of arousal and not finding a comfort zone.”

That wisdom is undoubtedly jotted in one of his notebooks, which will stretch a little longer for this season. There is no hiding how smart Tomlin is now, but that was never the whole book on him.

A few weeks after he became the Steelers’ coach, Tomlin invited Hammons, a Pittsburgh native and lifelong Steelers fan, to his first minicamp. Tomlin showed him the five Lombardi Trophies. He introduced him to the team’s chairman, Dan Rooney. Hammons was overwhelmed.

“We get out on the practice field, and he’d come over to me and say: ‘You know what, Terry? I could blow this whistle and all of the Pittsburgh Steelers would come running over. Do you want me to blow this whistle, Terry?’ ” Hammons said. “And he just laughs and walks away.”

Obama: A New Kind of Role Model

For the last forty years, since the untimely death of Dr. King, Black America has lacked a true national role model.

Sure, we have shared in the successes of athletes and musicians from Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan to Michael Jackson and Jay-Z, not to mention TV and movie stars like Oprah and Will Smith. But those people, I hate to say, would best be described as celebrity figures then idols then role models.

Not since Dr. King has a Black man been charged with leading all of his kinfolk at once. Young and old, college-educated and non-degree holder, rural and urban, rich and poor. All of these segments of the Black community, and others, were once held within the reach of Dr. King's voice.

On November 4, 2008, a man who has so much (smart, educated) yet so little (politician, half-white) in common with Dr. King made his voice heard. And Black America, albeit a generation removed, stood up and watched Barack Obama pick up the baton that Dr. King had taken from W.E.B. Dubois, his sparring partner Booker T. Washington and their predecessors Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.

Typically relays are run by four individuals, but - as we have learned for the last few centuries - Black America is often required to do more to achieve the same end.

So, running what amounts to the fifth leg, Chicago's favorite son Barack Obama has taken the baton and carried it further than any person of color ever has in this country.

Whether you agree with his policies or not, we can all agree that this moment will forever be remembered as having substantial significance for all Americans with Black Americans, not just African-Americans, at the fore front of that achievement.

With a Kenyan father, Barack Obama is not the traditional Black man in America. He did not live through the segregation that many of our parents and grandparents lived through for his entire life. He did not rise through the political ranks of Chicago and Illinois by being a loud proponent of affirmative action and a staunch opponent of police brutality.

If anything, Barack Obama represents the future of Black America more than most of us ever will. Namely because he represents all of America, which is exactly what Dr. King and those before him struggled so hard to accomplish.

Black America will always admire its athletes, entertainers and musicians, but we are a people best represented by those who seek to serve the public. The best of us are often those chosen to represent all Americans, not just Black Americans. The names Thurgood Marshall and Colin Powell should come to mind.

Like Marshall, Barack Obama used his knowledge of the law to leverage his way up America's ladder to success. And like Powell, he used his skill in Washington to lobby his way up the hearts and minds of Americans.

Now, a generation and some removed from Dr. King's death, we have a real role model who reminds Black Americans that everything feels so much better with a real role model in our lives. Even before we experience the benefits ourselves.

Because for the next 40 years, much like what we saw with Dr. King's emulators, Black boys and girls will strive to be more like Barack Obama. And we'll all be better off because of it.

Chicago Tribune: Election sends right message to young athletes

Election sends right message to young athletes
Chicago Tribune
Rick Morrissey

Over the last few days, black athletes and coaches have lined up to say that Barack Obama's victory in the presidential election proves to young African-Americans that anything is possible.

They should have taken it a step further.

What they should have said, in so many words, was:

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"To the kids who are dreaming of fame and fortune in sports: You have almost no chance of making it to the pros, and your odds of getting a college athletic scholarship are incredibly slim. Don't delude yourself. You're not the exception. You're most likely the rule.

"Play sports for the lessons they teach you about teamwork and effort and life. All those things are transferable to the real world. But there's only one LeBron James, and you're not him. Put down the ball once in a while and pick up a book, the way Obama did. You'll go far."

Deflating? Probably. Unfair? Maybe a little.

But absolutely real.

For too long, too many blacks have looked upon sports and entertainment as the only avenues to achieve huge success. Aided and abetted by coaches, parents and other relatives, they cling to the fantasy of impending wealth and stardom.

In a way, it makes sense. What worked for someone who looks like me and comes from a similar background as me will therefore work for me.

But it doesn't make it any less heartbreaking to watch.

What an opportunity there is now, with Obama preparing to move into the White House. Will kids look up from their pickup games long enough to notice? Will they start to reach higher than a basketball rim?

"What I like about Obama is that, even though his situation might be different from theirs, he did come from humble beginnings," said Louis Harrison Jr., a University of Texas professor who does research on race and athletics. "He wasn't born with a silver spoon. Hopefully, kids will connect with that and see that, hey, here's an opportunity to do something really great, and you don't necessarily have to run fast or jump high to do it."

If a kid comes up short of his goal of becoming a college athlete, his choices might be limited, especially if he hasn't paid attention to school.

If he comes up short of his goal of becoming president of the United States, lots of good can come from the pursuit. Maybe he becomes a doctor, lawyer or businessman. Maybe he makes a nice life for himself and his family.

All of this is coming from your resident white guy, and as such should be taken in that context. I can't begin to understand what it's like to grow up poor with the incredibly difficult challenges many blacks face.

But having just been through the college selection business with one of my children, I know that universities desperately want to increase the number of minority students in their institutions. Scholarships and aid abound for African-Americans.

The problem is that, for many of those kids, the only model they have for going to college is the sports-scholarship model.

Now we have a basketball-playing, soon-to-be leader of the free world who is of mixed racial heritage. The fact he's not like most politicians—the fact he can dribble a basketball without tripping over his feet—has led to all sorts of prose about the president-elect's hoops abilities. But if you have seen his jump shot, you know a basketball career was never in the cards for him.

The important thing is that, somewhere along the way, either he recognized his athletic shortcomings or someone convinced him of them. He went on to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, and the rest is world history.

Sports are not a dead end. They offer us an education of their own. One lesson is that you can't always get what you want. What you do with your life once that lesson sinks in is what really matters. The sooner that lesson arrives for most of us, the better.

Sometimes I hear college coaches talk to children about the importance of academics, and it rings hollow. One look at the graduation rates of college basketball and football programs tells you all you need to know. According to one study, 33 schools in last year's NCAA men's basketball tournament graduated at least 70 percent of their white players. Only 19 schools graduated that many black players.

Lots of kids have been too busy dribbling a basketball or running a football to realize that anything in life is possible. They didn't need Obama's election to tell them that. But it helps. Now all they need to do is look up.

Do You Need an Obama to Believe?

Do You Need an Obama to Believe?
Real Clear Politics
By Larry Elder

"Does Obama's victory, as a black man, make you feel that you can do anything?" Someone asked me that on election night.

It is a caricature of America that, pre-Obama, major obstacles blocked achievement. It is equally a caricature that Obama's win suddenly creates opportunity that did not exist before.

Hard work wins, my dad always told me. My Republican father, who disdained Democrats who "give people something for nothing," taught my brothers and me to work hard, stay focused, live within our means, and at all times avoid self-pity. My mom and dad always said, "Ninety percent of the people don't care about your problems. And the 10 percent are glad it's you."

Born in Athens, Ga., and eventually raised in Chattanooga, Tenn., my dad never knew his biological father. The only father figure in his life was harsh, distant and cold. His mother, because he made "too much noise" for her then-boyfriend, threw him out of the house at age 13.

So this penniless boy, living in the Jim Crow South as the Great Depression loomed, started knocking on doors. He finally got a job running errands and tending the yard for a white family. One day, the family's cook failed to show up. But my dad, having watched her in the kitchen, whipped up a passable meal. The family let the other helper go, and a cook was born.

Seeking more money, my dad applied for and got a job on the railroads as a Pullman porter -- then the country's largest private employer of blacks. He traveled all over the country, making a mental note of California because, he says, its beauty and warm weather seemed open and inviting, and the people seemed more fair.

World War II broke out. My dad enlisted as a Marine. He served as a cook and became a sergeant. The military ultimately stationed him on Guam as we prepared to invade the islands of Japan, an invasion that never took place because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

My dad returned to Chattanooga, where he went to an employment office. The lady at the desk told him he walked through the wrong door, directed him back out to the hall, and told him to enter through the "colored only" door.

"That's it," he angrily told my mom, whom he had just married. "I'm going to California, and in a few days, I will send for you."

My father arrived in Los Angeles and went from restaurant to restaurant to find work. "Sorry," he was told, "you have no references." "Sorry, you have no credentials." "Sorry ..." He, of course, knew why.

He went to an employment office. The woman said, "We have no openings." My dad said, "I'll sit until you do." He sat in that office from opening until closing for a day and a half. Finally, the woman called him to the desk and said: "I have a job. It's for a janitor. Do you want it?"

My dad worked at that job for nearly 10 years, while working a second full-time job for nearly as long and cooking for a white family on the weekends. He somehow managed to go to night school to get his GED and save enough money, while in his 40s, to start a small cafe near downtown Los Angeles.

He ran the cafe, which provided my brothers and me weekend and summer jobs, until he was in his 80s. One day, my dad and I decided to clean out the garage. We found a letter he wrote to my older brother, then 2 years old. My dad said he feared that if something happened to him, my brother would need guidance:

May 4, 1951

Kirk, my Son, you are now starting out in life -- a life that Mother and I cannot live for you.

So as you journey through life, remember it's yours, so make it a good one. Always try to cheer up the other fellow.

Learn to think straight, analyze things, be sure you have all the facts before concluding, and always spend less than you earn.

Make friends, work hard, and play hard. Most important of all remember this -- the best of friends wear out if you use them.

This may sound silly, Son, but no matter where you are on the 29th of September (Kirk's birthday), see that Mother gets a little gift, if possible, along with a big kiss and a broad smile.

When you are out on your own, listen and take advice but do your own thinking and concluding, set up a reasonable goal, then be determined to reach it. You can and will, it's up to you, Son.

Your Father,

Randolph Elder

Dad is now 93 and, thankfully, still with us.

So, yes, Obama's historic victory makes a statement about the long, hard, bloody journey. Obama makes people believe. Some of us always did.

Good read in the NYT

Letter to a Rookie
New York Times
By DOUG GLANVILLE
Published: September 29, 2008

Will Venable
PETCO Park
100 Park Blvd
San Diego, CA. 92101
Skip to next paragraph

The latest installment in an occasional series of guest columns by Doug Glanville, running throughout the 2008 baseball season.


Dear Will,

The other day I received an e-mail from a writer who had interviewed me a couple of years ago for Black History Month. We’d kept in touch, and he was writing to inform me of your promotion to the major leagues.

He also told me that you are the second African-American Ivy Leaguer to make it to that level. And he confirmed something I had suspected but had never fully explored: I was the first.

Putting aside our nasty Penn-Princeton rivalry, I want to congratulate you on your big-league call-up. I remember my first game, in 1996 with the Cubs. It is something you never forget.

I hope you don’t mind me sharing with you a little of what this experience has meant to me.

For the whole of my career, I knew that being an Ivy League graduate in major league baseball made me something of an anomaly. Certainly there have only been a handful of Ivy League baseball players of any culture or race. In the minor leagues, that pedigree wasn’t considered a badge of honor, or even much of an asset. Quite the opposite. The fact that I’d gone to a school like Penn caused question marks to swirl about my “focus” and my “commitment” to the game. After all, I was seen as someone who could walk away at any time (as one of my teammates who’d gone to Stanford did after a demotion).

I had critics say in print that I was “too smart for my own good” or that I “spent more time philosophizing than working.” I recognized that I often asked a lot of questions to get a deeper understanding of some techniques, but I always found it curious that I was accused of thinking I had all the answers and asking too many questions at the same time. I suspect that your path wasn’t a rose-petaled stroll in the park, either. A writer friend of mine, describing how my Ivy league degree was perceived in my minor league experience, referred to my experience coming up in minor league baseball as “Poison Ivy.”

But, unlike the minors, the major leagues can be a great equalizer. Unique backgrounds are seen as points of interest and color that stand out from the usual package. In marketing-friendly America, unique can be a great selling point. I don’t know much about your road to San Diego, but if you carry any resentment at all about being isolated in the minor leagues because of the simple reality of who you are, I hope you can keep that in mind. It got a lot better for me as time went on.

When I was in the thick of feeling alone, I focused on the common path of what we all as players were trying to achieve: loving to play this game and a dream of the major leagues. And despite everything, there was a lot more that brought us together as players than not. I also needed to believe that performing well can trump everything.

Somehow, the bookend of your achievement makes my own experience more tangible. I no longer feel like this phantom of impossibility, as I did from the day I was drafted and signed as a junior in June of 1991. (I did go back to school to get my degree, much to the consternation of some of the powers that be.) What seemed at times to be the equivalent of lightning striking twice has finally happened.

In some ways, embarking on a baseball career is a lonely walk for all players — young men who are often leaving home for the first time — but I knew from the moment I showed up for my first professional game, in Niagara Falls, N.Y., that there weren’t a lot of people who shared my particular experience. I was fortunate to have been raised in a town (Teaneck, N.J.) that embraced ethnic, religious and economic diversity. Otherwise it would have been much more challenging for me to find common ground with my teammates and coaches outside of that ball with the red stitches.

My minor league outfield instructor was the retired major leaguer Jimmy Piersall, and it took the two of us years to figure out how to deal with each other. He would tout his “painter’s son” background while referring to college graduates like me with a word I’d rather not put in this letter. But we found a space where we could connect: in the work ethic required to make it to the top of the profession we both loved. In the end, he became my number-one advocate, despite our diametrically opposed experiences.

I also spent a lot of my minor league career shaking off the exhausted “black athlete” labels of laziness, natural talent and nonchalance. I could only turn to mentors, my family and history to find my path, because there was no one else around who had my specific kind of challenge: bridging diversity, race . . . and academia. So I tapped the same source of strength that helped get my mother and father out of bed every day: they expected a degree of unfairness but knew that the people who had paved the way carried bigger burdens in much more difficult circumstances, enduring challenges just to find a job or to be able to vote.

It was a lot to juggle, but the saving grace was that, in the end, we all had to try to hit that baseball. We all had to perform. In some ways, that is what makes our game so great, it begs people to look beyond certain things because when they don’t, they miss some of its beauty.

I cannot close this letter without emphasizing that we must remember that our Negro League predecessors set the stage, turned on the lights and paid the bill, and now we were able to enjoy performing in the theater they constructed. We need to always keep alive their precious story — which is about baseball, for sure, but also about sacrifice and humility, patience and faith, forgiveness and perseverance. They represent everything baseball should want to be. Everything America should want to be. We are part of their legacy.

Sincerely,

Doug Glanville

A book worth buying

Area African-American role models abound
New book profiles 126 professionals; hopes to inspire local youths
By DAVE HANEYOF THE PEORIA JOURNAL STAR
September 19, 2008

PEORIA — "Value your education; volunteer, mentor advocate and participate. Be fair, be open to diverse ideas, and maintain good humor and a sense of integrity. Don't sell yourself short - but don't take yourself too seriously. Above all: do well, no matter what."

Certainly words to live by or to follow.

They belong to Lorene King, an academic skills specialist at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, just one of 126 local African-American professionals living in Peoria and who are profiled in a book to be released next week, published by Illinois Central College.

Called "Role Models: Profiles of Successful African-American Professionals in Peoria, Illinois," the work is the brainchild of Rita Ali, ICC's executive director of diversity, who started a similar venture several years ago wanting to learn success stories of those she admired in the community.

"The book has changed me, inspired me more than ever, learning from other people's experiences," said Ali, who gave credit for the inspiration to one of her own role models, Romeo B. Garrett, Bradley University's first black professor, a key civil rights figure locally and author of "The History of the Negro in Peoria" and "Famous First Facts About Negroes."

The 268-page book highlights several who work for Caterpillar Inc., the city of Peoria, four judges, lots of doctors, an artist, several in the medical field, teachers and professors. Each individual shares a little about his occupation, personal life, his influences or inspiration, accomplishments and community involvement. The subjects also offer a bit of career advice.

There's executive directors, vice presidents of companies, department heads, managers and coaches. Combined, their annual salaries total more than $12 million. There's many names that are recognizable among the community and several that are not.

But more important than who is in the book is the inspiration to be shared with Peoria's youth.

Among the common links most of the 126 contributors share is having some sort of mentor, a caring adult, "someone who they looked up to," Ali said.

As one profiled in the book put it, "there's kids who say they don't have a positive role model in their home, in their neighborhood or in their life; their role models are those in (professional sports) - the untouchables," Ali recalled, "but these people - these role models - live right here in the community."

"The people in this book are real, they are accessible . . . These outstanding Americans are a true reflection of the depth and breadth of incredible talent within the city of Peoria," Ali writes in the book's introduction.

What's more, many of those profiled in the book have offered to serve as a role model in some way, either for the short-term or long-term, Ali said. "The book is serving as the hook-up," a vehicle to bridge the gap of need of the children and what the mentors can provide.

As to why 126 profiles: "There was no magic number, it was going to be 100 but we just kept getting such a good response that we kept going." Plans already are in the works for a sequel as well as a similar book that will profile African-American para-professionals, those in the skilled trades, and another highlighting entrepreneurs, which Ali hopes to have released this spring.

Real Role Models - An Update

Friends and Colleagues,

As promised, here's an update on Real Role Models.

We finished a draft version of the manuscript in April.
The early reviews were both flattering and overwhelmingly favorable.
We're putting final touches on the manuscript.
The book should be out early in '09.

That's pretty much it. But the long of it is that we've been working hard to continue thinking of how we can make RRM speak to and for those young Black students that we are so desperately trying to reach. I posted the video by John Hope Bryant below to help paint the picture of exactly what we're up against in terms of the lack of motivation and inspiration that has hindered so many young Blacks, males in particular, from reaching their potential and how many of us, not at all just Louis and I, are striving for the same thing.

We can make a difference. We can help others reach their potential. We can all be real role models.

Reaching out to Reading is Fundamental, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Teach for America, the Boys and Girls Club, and other organizations that look out for young Black students is just one way we're hoping to get RRM into the hands of those who can be impacted the most. Of course, one way would've been to have Sen. Barack Obama plug the book during his speech last Thursday...

Speaking of that speech, when Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president it was an incredibly moving and powerful night. I am not ashamed to admit I teared up. I, too, was one of those kids that dreamed of being the president when I was five or six years old.

But, I found myself thinking, what about those Black kids growing up without such ambition or aspirations? What about kids who don't have a mom waking them up at 4:30 a.m. to work on their schoolwork? What about the kids who don't have grandparents to care for and help raise them? What about the kids who think that drug dealer, basketball player or rapper are their only options?

Part of me is worried that Obama's "celebrity" treatment makes him more like Jay-Z than Thomas Jefferson, but his career path and education stifle that thought. Still, part of me worries that having a Black man as president may mean one more profession to add to that list of drug dealer, NBA player, rapper, instead of doing what RRM intends to do: inspire and motivate young Black students to realize the opportunities before them and work hard to reach their potential. I hope Obama's candidacy reaches far beyond the New York Times headline of "first Black president" and into the heart and minds of millions of Black boys and girls who need hope and inspiration.

Some of us are not going to become Jay-Z or Barack Obama or Kobe Bryant. Some of us will be accountants and engineers and small business owners and teachers.

This is not to say that we can not all be rich and famous. This is simply to say that all of us have to realize true success is not measured by money or time on TV or, Obama would probably admit, votes. We can all be successful in our own right if we work hard, set goals and strive to make a positive impact, especially in our communities, as a certain Senator did in Chicago several years ago.

So, when I say we're working hard to make sure RRM speaks to and for young Black students, I mean we are striving to make sure that when a 15-year-old high school sophomore in Fifth Ward, Houston or an 18-year-old senior in Anacostia, D.C. picks up this book, they see more than some words about two dozen or so Black people who made a lot of money or got a lot of degrees or won a lot of awards. Or got a lot of votes.

We're hoping they see their own potential through this book. We're hoping they see themselves, through the paths made by those before them, as real role models. We're hoping.

Relevant Information, Timely Effort and Strong Leadership

A friend of mine works for Operation HOPE and I find this video message by the organization's founder, John Hope Bryant, to be extremely relevant, timely and sound.

Black boys 'need role models not rappers'

Black boys 'need role models not rappers'
By Sarah Womack, Social Affairs Correspondent
10 Aug 2007

Black youngsters need a new generation of role models, drawn from the legal profession, business and education, to counter under-achievement and involvement in crime, a Government-funded report has said.

Too often the role models for young black men are celebrities and rappers who glamorise crime, guns or gangs, the independent Reach report said.

It came as a charity boss claimed that Britain's inner cities were starting to resemble American ghettos and that a lack of money was to blame.

"We need to create a society which does not leave our young people behind as the few become richer," said Chuka Umunna, a trustee of the 409 Project in Lambeth, south London, which helps youths aged 10-17 involved in crime or at risk of offending.

Involvement by black youths in gang-and-gun crime has taken centre stage in the wake of several high profile murders of black children, including 15-year-old Jessie James, who was gunned down while he cycled through a park in Manchester last year.

His mother, Barbara Reid, told the inquest into his death that her son had been murdered for "disrespecting" local gun gangs by his refusal to join them.

In London, 17 teenagers have been murdered this year alone.

An estimated four in 10 young people in gangs are reluctant members, joining under peer pressure or because of fears for their safety or the safety of their families.

Figures in yesterday's report, which was written by 20 experts from the fields of education, youth justice, the voluntary and community sector, law enforcement and business, set out the future economic costs of failure to promote equality of opportunity for black boys.

It estimated that tackling under-achievement among black boys and young men could benefit the economy by £24 billion over the next 50 years.

The figure includes the costs of the impact of lower educational achievement on labour market outcomes, schools exclusions and involvement in the criminal justice system.

Clive Lewis, the director of The Men's Room, a charity working with black young men, and the chairman of Reach, said that organisations tackling under-achievement needed support in applying for Government funding and that schools must be more consistent in closing the academic gap between white pupils and black pupils, especially boys.

He also said that black youths need better role models: "Black boys and young men desperately need a greater diversity of images and portrayals, showing that black men can be, and are, successful in a wide range of careers including business, teaching, the law and health care."

Uanu Seshmi, of the From Boyhood to Manhood Foundation, said boys need self-confidence to reject gangs.

"A lot of young boys have been brought up in a toxic environment … where they're being taught to become victims," he said.

"And I believe in order for us to solve it, peer mentoring is a good one, business is a good one, but essentially, we need to teach young people to have a positive relationship with people."

Tim Campbell, the winner of the first Apprentice TV series and the founder of The Bright Ideas Trust, which aims to support entrepreneurs, said he would like to see money spent on education and business opportunities for young black males.

"The emphasis on role models is just a small aspect of addressing some of the issues, particularly with black boys in the community," he said.

The Government will give its official response to the report in three months.

• Two men have been arrested on suspicion of the murder of 15-year-old schoolboy Jessie James. The men, aged 20 and 21, are both in jail.

They were named as suspects after a witness came forward during the inquest into Jessie's death yesterday.

Police described the development as a possible breakthrough in helping to solve the murder inquiry.

Key recommendations:

* Calls for a structured National Role Model programme for black boys and young black men.

* Creation of a national umbrella body to provide support to voluntary groups that face "significant barriers" to Government funding.

* Stronger relationship and engagement between parents of black boys and teachers and schools to promote educational aspiration.

* Communities and Local Government Department should appoint a task force that will drive forward the Reach recommendations, reporting to a Minister for Race.

* Ofsted must provide greater consistency in the way schools are inspected to ensure schools close the academic gap between black and white pupils.

Black youths to get top role models

Black youths to get top role models
Alison Benjamin
The Guardian
Wednesday July 30 2008

Geoff Thompson, a writer, teacher and self defence instructor, who is being cited as a black role model

Geoff Thompson, a writer, teacher and self defence instructor, who is being cited as a black role model. Photograph: Christopher Thomond

Geoff Thompson, former karate champion and founder of Manchester-based Youth Charter for Sport, Turning Point chief executive Lord [Victor] Adebowale, and head of the Housing Corporation, Steve Douglas, would all be welcome members of the first Black Boys' National Role Model programme.

Concerned that too often black boys aspire to role models that can glamorise crime, drugs and gangs, the government has launched a programme to find black male achievers to motivate black boys to achieve and succeed.

At least 20 national role models, from a diverse range of backgrounds and professions, will be selected by an independent panel, including Apprentice winner Tim Campbell and fashion designer Ozwald Boateng, to share their stories of success in schools, youth clubs and young offender institutes across England. Applicants will have the chance to mentor in their local area. Improving the visibility of positive black role models was one of the recommendations to the government by Reach, an independent group drawn from public services and academia with in-depth understanding of the barriers facing black boys.

Launching the programme, communities secretary Hazel Blears said: "There are thousands of role models out there who offer great examples for black boys to follow. This is about harnessing their potential, making them more visible and getting more young people on the right track." The recruitment campaign will run until September 2.

· To apply to be a black boys' national role model go to direct.gov.uk/reach