The “Jenna 6” serves as a reminder of the chilling racial injustice that still exists today, where 6 Black high school students were charged with attempted murder, after a series of fights with white students. The fights were sparked by white students draping three nooses over a tree in the schoolyard. The white students received a 3-day suspension. It took Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III to bring 20,000 protestors from all over the country to this little town of Jenna in central Louisiana to intervene for justice. HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TODAY? Wake up! Since then, a noose was found hanging from a tree outside a building that houses three Black campus groups at the University of Maryland.

Washington, DC is the capitol of our nation, and indeed the capitol of the democratic world, but its citizens have no vote in Congress. The US Senate just recently failed to pass a bill that would have given DC residents, 72% Black, at least a vote in the House of Representatives. How could our great democratic nation be so hypocritical?

In every article I write, the incoming news and statistics dramatize the demise of the Black male in a society of “benign neglect” where little is being done. As an example, 50% of Black males never finish high school. Of those who do make it to college, only 35% graduate. Nationally, there are more Black men in prison, than in college. Locally, San Francisco’s Black population is now down to 6%, but 50% of its 2,000 prison inmate population is Black. How could this happen? High school graduating females used to go to a Black college to find a husband as well as to get an education, but now the average ratio of Black women to Black men is 7 to 1.

However, it is encouraging to hear of the prominent Black Search Committee assigned to replace H. Patrick Swygert, the resigning President of Howard University, a high school alumnus of mine. Howard University Trustees General Colin Powell and Richard Parsons, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner are heading up the effort. Other members of the Search Committee are well known Trustees Vernon Jordan, former Executive Director of the National Urban League, Dr. Ruth Simmons, President of Brown University and Earl Graves, President and Publisher of Black Enterprise Magazine. With all these Black veteran civil rights fighters, one would ask where are the young Black males making a change? Lest we forget, it was young Black males that significantly brought about civil rights in the US from Dr. Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson to H. Rap Brown and Huey Newton.

What is driving the social genocide of an entire generation of young Black males? What is the impact of over 50% of Black males bring raised in a single parent family? Who cares?? With all the apparent racial progress, positive Black male role models and graduate opportunities available to our young Black males - HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TODAY?

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