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…BOLD and Born to WIN!
Carter D. Womack
Paying It Forward as a Positive Role Model and Mentor

I credit my unshakable foundation to my strong and loving parents, Jessie and Matthew Womack, who worked hard to make a living. My mother was a housekeeper and I recognized her hard working, comical and loving spirit as I watched the movie “The Help”, since she also worked for a rich white doctor. My father worked the fields and ran his own farm and wood business in Alabama. I was the youngest of 10 children, born and raised in the South during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

Discrimination was in its prime, with segregation, Jim Crow laws and white and colored drinking fountains. As a Black man, or as we were called, Negros, pronounced “Nigra” in Greenville, Alabama, you were supposed to “know your place.”  As a very young man, I remember going to the Greyhound bus station and having to enter the station on the side of the building, because Blacks weren’t allowed to enter through the front.  This was one of those moments our parents hoped we would see end during our lifetime. Even though my parents were not well educated, they helped me realize the value of education to improve my life and as a means of leveling the playing field around me. Through their teaching, one of my goals became sharing and giving back to my community and to stress the benefits of education to as many of my brothers and sisters as possible.

Fire hoses, civil rights marches, lynchings and violence surrounding the right to vote were profound motivators for me. I made a commitment to go to college and outlined a clear plan of action for myself so that I would stay focused and achieve the goals that I set.    At times, my decision was tough because I wanted to go out with my friends and party instead of study, but the thought of waking up at 4:00 a.m. to pick cotton was sobering and kept me in line above all else. I knew the hard work and sacrifices my parents made and the dedication of my family and the reinforcement from teachers that wanted to see me do well, so I knew I couldn’t mess up my chance with so many people – including myself – pulling for me to succeed. Following through with my commitment was hard work but it paid off. I got good grades in college and saw where my friends, who skipped classes and partied all night began to struggle and eventually drop out of school, all because of a lack of focus.

After my graduation from Alabama A & M, with degrees in math and chemistry, I became a life member in their alumni association and elected to the Alabama A&M Hall of Fame for outstanding community service. I was elected president of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., twice, once as their 27th president, from 1989 through 1993 and as their 29th president, from 1995 through 1997 and was elected national president of National Pan-Hellenic Council, Inc., in 1993 and served through 1995. In addition, I was elected to serve three terms as an Akron, Ohio, city councilman and I’ve held executive positions with several Fortune 500 companies.  I was voted as one of the” 100 Most Influential Blacks in America” by Ebony magazine, and listed in Who’s Who in the Midwest and Who’s Who in Black Corporate America.

Today, I am the president and chief executive officer at Leadership At Its Best, LLC. I established this company because I’m still fulfilling a commitment I made to pay it forward as a means of thanking my parents, family, friends and role models who were instrumental in helping me to be successful in my life.  Times have changed and my motivation may differ from yours, but motivation IS motivation, and what moves you is no less real than mine. If you’re having a tough time focusing, step back, and examine your goals. Clearly define them, outline how and when you expect to complete each leg of your journey and re-dedicate yourself to your commitment. Surround yourself with others who want to be successful and identify with role models and mentors.

Self-awareness, hard work, discipline, commitment and good grades all figure in to your character. These strong values have a definite spot in the workplace and in this world today. As we have become a global society, being able to work with people and communicate with everyone and focus on getting things accomplished are what will make a difference in your career path. I urge you to identify your “cotton fields” and your “4:00 a.m. wake up call,” then re-dedicate and re-focus. You will achieve your goals, and savor your accomplishments, but the pride you will feel as you reach out to those who will look up to you, will be priceless. Then, as a proud Black man, “You will know your place.”

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Carter D. Womack provides leadership development, diversity training and mentoring to middle and high school students, universities and businesses throughout the United States through his company, Leadership At Its Best, LLC.

Young, Black And On Track

Why African-American Boys Often Fail in School

By ERNEST HOLSENDOLPH
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer

African-American boys: lose the skullcaps, pull up the droopy pants and get to work. Parents, teachers, employers and girlfriends agree. If you’re looking for your future, you’ll find it in school.

While the rest of the country toils in universities and technical institutes to acquire the skills for professions, and the knowledge to understand the world, black boys — to an alarming degree — are lagging in class, dropping out or stumbling across the high school finish line with too few skills to make it through college.

Wherever you turn, these boys are notable by their absence.

More than 70 percent of historically black Clark Atlanta University’s students are black women. Some 65 percent of students training to be doctors at Morehouse School of Medicine are female. The point is inescapable — young black males are too often missing in action when it comes to academic achievement and preparation for college.

As it happens, there is a general trend among boys, white and minority, to trail female students in college enrollment and in graduation rates. However, black boys in particular are having acute problems academically — so acute that many drop out of high school at the first opportunity.

The malaise among black boys extends across economic lines. In an important study published this year of the Shaker Heights, Ohio, school system, where virtually all youngsters come from middle- to upper-class households, African-American student achievement trailed that of whites, and black boys as a group trailed all other groups. The analysis by John Ogbu was published in the spring, and titled Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement.

The Georgia Board of Regents found in a recent study that nothing short of a comprehensive improvement seems likely to get more black boys through school and into higher education. The “Final Report of the University System of Georgia’s African-American Male Initiative,” was published May 21.

Teachers and parents

What’s needed, the regents say, are teachers better equipped to deal with balky black boys, as well as persistent parental support and better-organized outside mentoring help. Most of all, school systems need to consider dropping the vocational education pathway, a convenient way to divert students who don’t fit. Instead, the regents say, put everybody on the college track and make it clear the schools expect all to achieve.

A pattern among African-American youngsters is that they emerge from elementary school in reasonably good shape, if they learn to read in timely fashion. However, when they try to cross the fast-moving, rock-strewn river called middle school, many black boys get swept into fads, laziness and indifference, falling behind, never to catch up.

Searching for answers, I checked in with some of the most careful boy-watchers around, black girls. Invariably, my query — “What’s the matter with the guys?” — was greeted with smiles and a rather short list of answers:

They seem to have no focus. They don’t seem to be able to make long-term plans and stick with them. They get caught up too much in fads, in whatever seems to be happening right now. Following the crowd means more to them than to girls. If something looks appealing to them, they can easily be led off their path and into something else. In one way or another, the girls said, the brothers lack focus or priorities.

The young men themselves, talking about what is important, betray a materialistic streak often reflected in music, particularly rap, videos and in some movies aimed at youth.

Youngsters, even in college, sometimes talk, yearningly, about dropping out, getting a job, buying a “truck,” a sport utility vehicle loaded with booming sound gear; rolling on “dubs,” outsized 20-inch wheels or “Sprewells” — double rims that can cost $7,000 and more a set. It is a life so compelling to some that they find it hard to postpone such goals to study beyond high school.

A success story

Other boys, also fixed on short-term results, daydream of athletic careers and overnight success as entertainers, careers available to only a minuscule number.

James Poole, a YMCA staffer or consultant most of his adult life, has made mentoring boys an avocation for 40 years. An excellent coach, Poole initially got boys’ attention through basketball, and then through personal mentoring. Now based in Columbia, Md., he advises community groups.

Several years ago, nearly 100 of the African-American men he mentored gave a testimonial dinner for him in Cleveland; they included ministers, executives, scholars with doctorates and media people. Morse Diggs, the Atlanta TV broadcaster, is one of them.

In later years Poole counseled girls as well as boys, so he was ready to draw contrasts.

“For guys more than girls, instant gratification seems to be important,” said Poole. “And for some, drug-taking becomes the gratification, and for some, notoriety or a damaged reputation is better than a nonexistence.”

By contrast, he said, “It is much more common among modern black women to think long-term gratification rather than instant success. . . . they know how to plan their work and then work their plan.”

And nothing, not even sweet-talking boys, gets them far off their track, Poole said.

Black women, like white women, have bought more heavily than black males into the notion that the glass ceiling can be penetrated, that opportunities are out there if you are prepared to grab them.

Detours in school

Compounding the aimlessness that marks too many black boys is the fact that school systems seem to cast them aside easily. And there are lots of detours, especially with the coming of more testing to reach the next grade.

A Cobb County executive pointed out to me one of the ways youngsters get sidetracked, especially if parents are not closely involved with students’ success. She asked whether her daughter, having gone through fifth grade with all As and Bs in math, could take pre-algebra in the sixth grade.

“Not unless she passes a test for pre-algebra,” was the answer.

She asked, “Suppose she comes close but fails to hit the mark?”

The answer was that she would have to take general math but could retest in a year.

“Logic told me,” said my friend, “if you cannot measure up to pre-algebra in the fifth grade, a year of general math certainly won’t make you more qualified, and that is an example of how kids can fall off the college track at a very early age.”

Her point was that if kids have to negotiate the education system without close parent involvement all the way, they can easily get sidetracked and discouraged.

Nearly everyone, including the regents in their 85-page report, sees better teaching as a key to better performance. They urge programs to retain good teachers. Louis Castenell, dean of education at the University of Georgia and an expert in the problems of urban teachers, says any teachers can be trained to improve their relationship and communication with black male students.

“Young black males can just look at a teacher, especially the white female teachers, and sense fear and distrust,” Castenell said. “That leads to a situation where teachers distance themselves from youngsters who make them uneasy, and select only the best-behaved and most compliant students as favorites — and regarding the others as deviant.”

Only training can help teachers improve those relationships, he says.

“I sit here ready to help but my phone does not ring often,” said Castenell, a member of the regents’ task force on the African-American male study.