Local Youth Relish Opportunity to Hear Role Model Speak

Local Youth Relish Opportunity to Hear Role Model Speak

BY DANA HOYLAND
Rice News Staff
November 4, 1999

As Nelson Mandela took the stage at Rice University last week, 10-year-old Benson Jackson expressed what so many around him were feeling: “This is the greatest moment of my life,” he said.

Jackson attended the event with fellow members of Pass It On, an inner-city mentoring pilot project for African-American boys and young men in the Yates High School feeder pattern of the Houston Independent School District (HISD). The project is sponsored by the Rev. William A. Lawson Institute for Peace and Prosperity and includes participants ranging in age from 10 to 21 years old.

Jamil Anderson, a Pass It On adult mentor, believes the program helps kids academically, but it also is important because “it brings these young men into a lot of different social situations and events,” he said.

One of those situations was watching Mandela, the first black South African president, speak at Autry Court Oct. 26.

James Castillo, a 13-year-old at Middle College for Technology Careers, was just happy to “see somebody I’ve always wanted to meet.”

After all, he has been a fan of Mandela’s for some time, but said he was surprised when he found out Mandela was able to be president after his release from prison. “In America, that would not happen,” he said. “There are different rules for being president. You’re not supposed to have any criminal history.”

Although he’s only in the fifth grade, Jackson knows that Mandela is a symbol of liberation and an inspirational figure for black people.

If he had the chance, he said he’d like to get to know Mandela “a little bit better.”

Rev. William A. Lawson, of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, who attended the event with the group, called Mandela “a prophet of the 20th, and indeed, the 21st century.”

Lawson pointed to Mandela’s reference to self-esteem as an important lesson for the young men in the program.

“If you believe in yourself, nothing can suppress you permanently,” he explained.

He credits programs like Pass It On with helping to develop the self-confidence children need, and he said it helps them to know that “it doesn’t matter how poor they are, it doesn’t matter what ethnic background they came from, it doesn’t matter what the ugliness of their surrounding is. They are able to be whatever they want to be, and it’s that sense of self-esteem that makes it possible for them to rise above whatever their circumstances are.”

In a time when black young men are seeking role models, Mandela is someone for them to emulate.

“I used to think that I lived in poverty, but he (Mandela) lived in extreme poverty and look where he is now,” Castillo said. “I feel like if he can do it, I can do it.”