It was a late evening last year when I decided to go for a quick jog around my neighborhood.
However, I only made it half way through my exercise before I was abruptly stopped by a white police officer.
"Hey! Do you live around here," he asked after rolling down his window.
While slowly peeling back the hoodie I was under, I responded with "Yes, is there a problem?"
After the officer implied I looked like a car thief and rolled his eyes, the encounter ended as quickly as it started, but throughout the conversation, I couldn't help but recall the lessons of a book I read at age 13 that suggested I should never run at night to begin with.
The chapter titles of the 145-page book were simple.
Keep your hands out of your pockets when in stores. Don’t wander the streets without a destination. Never get in a car unless you know who bought it. Speak without slang. Don’t become a statistic.
For Anthony Davis and Jeffrey Jackson, writing “Yo Little Brother…,” a book of survival tips for young African-Americans males, was about sharing colloquial wisdom that’ll keep young black men out of the cemetery and the penitentiary.
“It's a constant -- It's nothing new,” said Jackson. “We recognize in Black America, we're always in danger. It’s incredible the impact the book has had and the fact that we're talking now means it’s still got legs.”
“Yo Little Brother…” was published in 1998. But a glance at its table of contents reads more like the front of an inner-city newspaper in 2014.
In several high-profile cases this summer, police officers shot – and in some instances killed – unarmed black men who were walking the street. From Ferguson to Los Angeles, it’s not hard to see why a book of survival tips may not be such a bad idea.
A product of south Philadelphia during the 1960s and 70s, Jackson knows firsthand the struggles of a young black man in the urban city.
“Out of my circle of [childhood] friends, I’m one of four that graduated high school and only one of two that graduated from college,” he said.
Noticing a lack of materials for young black men, Jackson and Davis were inspired to write a book of rules to present a “sophisticated way to look at life” for young black men, who fight to survive in the United States.
“We would see things on the news and say, ‘if that brother would have only done that or this,’” said Davis, now a retired teacher from Philadelphia. “We started with 50 ideas and it just started growing.”
However, major U.S. publishing companies did not share the pair’s enthusiasm.
“We got 30 rejections,” Davis said. “They told us young black men don’t read books.”
Conversely, five major African-American publishers in the country offered to publish the book right away, Jackson said.
“African American Images dropped two projects to publish it immediately,” Jackson said. “It was one of the first books to speak straight to young brothers. If nobody is communicating to the young brothers, who are they going to ask?”
| Members of Omega Psi Phi prepare for the 21st annual Youth Leadership Conference, an all-day empowerment training for young black men that will be held on Sat., Oct. 25 at the University of Southern California. |
Growing up without a father in L.A. County, I had no one to ask and my mother recognized that. One early Saturday morning in October 2000, she dropped me off at the Omega Psi Phi Youth Leadership Conference in Compton. The all-day conference lead by a band of educated and professional black men was about empowerment, fellowship, brotherhood, college prep, and mentorship.
While that first conference is only a blur now, I do remember one thing precisely – being handed “Yo Little Brother…”
During reading time, I would pull the book out in Mr. English’s English class – yes, his name was Mr. English – and soak in the lessons about society, education, and sex. While my teenage classmates found the book intriguing, I realized even then why I needed to read the book.
The statistics speak for themselves. According to 2010 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, homicide is the leading cause of death in black men ages 15-34. Half of all premature deaths involving young black men from ages 15-19 are a result of homicide. For young white males the leading cause of death is accidents.
Likewise, high school graduation rates for young black men continue to trail the national average of 78 percent. In 2012, a report released by the Schott Foundation for Public Education revealed a low 47-percent graduation rate of black males attending public school.
As a graduate student and award-winning journalist, those figures humble me. I’m one of the fortunate brothers that survived because Jackson and Davis reached back and wrote a manual detailing every sacrifice I’d have to make.
Don’t take dangerous shortcuts home. Don’t run at night. Never hang in groups. Learn the black rules of driving. Learn how to save. Avoid known troublemakers. Study hard.
“What we put in our book was nothing new, we didn’t invent it,” said Jackson, who now provides mental health services. “But the same message sounds different and is accepted different man-to-man.”
“I’ve had hundreds of people tell me that the book saved their life, or the life of their nephew or son,” Davis added.
Some critics have accused the book of suggesting young black men should not "act black” to go further in life, but Jackson and Davis vehemently deny that allegation as naivety.
“Who defines what acting black is,” Davis asked. “Too many young [black] people think they’re invincible, living in a post-racial society. They bought into this very hard rap music that’s disrespectful to women and materialistic…but acting black isn’t acting violent, it’s following in the footsteps of black men who built 135 black colleges in this country.”
While figures indicate that one out of three black men will end up facing prison time, David said nobody ever focuses on the other two thirds.
"[Young black men] are bombarded with images that say, 'You are a thug,'" he said. "But two thirds are doing the right thing. They did a lot of things to kill off black people in this country -- Jim Crow laws, lynchings, employment inequalities -- but we're still here."
And perhaps that's the message. Challenges persist for young black men, but with a little help from our elders, more of us will be able to survive in a nation where the odds are stacked against us.