Today, I participated in the College Board conference Dream Deferred: The Future of African American Education.
This was a powerful, awesome, and unbelievable conference.  Educators, students and others discussed, brainstormed, engaged, networked, and collaborated.  The highlight was Robert Townsend. Educators and students viewed his new film The Hive about a young man pulled from his father's gang and forced into a reform school .  Afterwards, we engaged in profound and enlightening discussions.  Townsend is a dynamic speaker and compassionate about making a difference in the lives of students and educators.  He walks by faith and not by sight.   This was an uplifting experience.



 
 

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun? 
Or fester like a sore—
And then run? 
Does it stink like rotten meat? 
Or crust and sugar over— 
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags 
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

—Langston Hughes (1902-1967)



 
'We were also vaguely taught
certain vague absolutes: that we were
better than no one but infinitely superior to
everyone; that we were the products of the
proudest and most mistreated of the races
of man; that there was nothing enormously
difficult about life; that one succeeded as a
matter of course.  Life was not a struggle--it was
something that one did.'

---Lorraine Hansberry