Across the country, the streets, avenues and boulevards named after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. are often lined with blighted and boarded-up remnants of once-proud black business corridors.
In Southeast Washington, the 2700 block of Martin Luther King Avenue was once such an area. It was a strip where unemployed men once loitered in front of a shuttered McDonald’s. In that place now stands the Friendship Technology Preparatory Academy, a program improving the lives of students in that area.
On Wednesday, in a third-floor classroom of that building, six young black men participated in video chat about President Obama’s autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who sat in the classroom, led the video chat, which was broadcast to other schools across the District. The participants had all accepted the “challenge,” to read Obama’s book over the Christmas holiday, and on Wednesday, the mayor talked with the young men about the book and how they could improve the lives of other young people in the city.
“I like how President Obama never gave up,” said Trayvon Thomas, a junior at Friendship who took part in the event. “Even though he had to switch his plan up, he really kept going and he never gave up.”
During the discussion, the students asked Bowser to hire more male teachers, create more jobs, increase affordable housing and create programs to help students prepare for college entrance exams. Bowser agreed to their suggestions, but the mayor held her ground when one young man from McKinley Tech High School questioned the need for metal detectors in the schools.
“From where I am sitting, this is one thing that I struggle with,” Bowser said. “I land on the side of making everyone safe. Across the country, metal detectors are considered part of best practices.”
Bowser said that it was important to her to host the chat. “When I talked about how to grow the middle class in the District of Columbia, young black men and boys of color are so intricate. Their ability to get access to good-paying jobs to stay in D.C. and to raise their families is key to how we grow.”
Following the chat, Bowser sat at a classroom desk and signed one of her first bills into law, naming the city’s youth summer jobs program after former mayor Marion Barry, who died last month.
Donald Hense, founder and chairman of the Friendship Charter Schools, sat quietly in the room during the discussion. But afterward, Hense, a Morehouse College graduate who served as an usher during King’s funeral, reflected on the importance of the city’s mayor discussing Obama’s book on the eve of King’s birthday.
“We designed this building to get that Martin Luther King Avenue address,” Hense said. “And the whole notion that just 12 days in office, she would be interested in the well-being of black boys on the eve of Dr. King’s birthday is hugely significant. “
In the past five years, students at the school have received more than 600 D.C. achievement scholarships, 100 scholarships in football, 25 POSSE scholarships and three Gates- Millennium scholarships.
“Dr. King always wanted for black children to be judged by the content of the character and not the color of the skin,” Hense said.