By: Pastor Keion Henderson It was a warm sunny day in July of 1999. The city was Fort Wayne, a medium sized town in the northeastern corner of Indiana. My mother saw me off and wished me well, as I drove due east to visit a college in an effort to ascertain a basketball scholarship. Paying for college was not even an option. If it was not for this great nation, and it’s commitment to higher education, I would have never been able to attend. I am the son of a single mother, who worked at Taco Bell to ensure her three children had food to eat and clothes to wear. She raised us in the crime ridden city of Gary, Indiana. We are famous for a few things: Michael Jackson, sports, and crime. Anybody who knows anything about inner city culture knows that Gary often tops the charts as it relates to disenfranchisement and extreme poverty. Nonetheless, this is where I was born and raised, and I am proud to say so. I grew up surrounded by gang activity. I saw what a lack of jobs and opportunity does to a community and the psyche of the people who are inundated with such misfortune. As a kid and young teenager, my greatest fear was being killed by someone of my own race for mistaken identity or the stray bullets of constant drive-bys. The first time I lost a friend to a bullet was in the 6th grade. It’s still… [Read full story]
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