Help Bring Road Scholars to a National Audience

--She took them on the road to keep them from the lure of the streets...

More than a decade ago, one woman, Thelma Straight, took 10 at-risk teenage boys on the road for a crash course in what it means to be a Black man in America. She hoped that their conversations with older African American men about the challenges they’d faced might prevent these kids from becoming another statistic.

Road Scholars retraces the journey of those boys since the project ended. Now in their 20s, they grapple with the resurgence of some of the same issues these older men faced. The film will reunite them with their former mentors for new conversations, man-to-man.

We are excited that Road Scholars has just been accepted to air to a national audience, but we need to raise enough funding to complete the project, including many network-required deliverables.

This is a story of hope, inspiration, and a possible roadmap for a generation. Please help us secure the matching support we need to take the conversation to a nationwide audience and shed light on a part of the Black experience that’s been too often ignored.

THE BACKSTORY:

It was 2009, and “Thug Life” was dominating popular culture, from music to movies and clothing. But the odds were stacked against young Black males. At the time, homicide was the leading cause of death for them, and one in three was expected to end up in prison at some point in his life. Black men earned less than 75% of what white men earned and were twice as likely to be unemployed.

Thelma Straight--a teacher, mother, and author--had lost her brother to a senseless shooting when he was 17. Straight wanted to help the next generation understand what they were up against. She chose a diverse group of kids—some, drawn by the lure of easy money; many lacked father figures. Straight taught the boys how to interview, then she took them on the road to record the oral histories of older African American men, using them as mentors, surrogate father figures, and cautionary tales.

THE BOYS

Straight chose a diverse group of kids. Among them: a former student of hers with impulse disorder and anger issues, who once called Thelma a “bitch” in class; a kid whose grandfather was a drug addict and alcoholic; an athlete who was unhappy that he was being pushed to become a basketball star just because he was nearly 7’ tall and Black; a Navy brat whose family seemed picture-perfect to outsiders; an emotionally withdrawn, self-described “lone wolf,” who didn’t consider himself “Black enough” by his peers’ standards; and two gay teenagers. At the time, there was little support for Black LGBTQ teens. African Americans accounted for 49% of HIV/AIDS cases even though they represented only 13% of the total U.S. population.

THE MEN

The boys interviewed nearly 40 men, including Florida’s first African American Sheriff, a former USAF Lt. Col. who later became an outspoken civil rights leader, recovering drug addicts and former gang members, men with AIDs, a gay college administrator, a poet, a football star turned opera singer, a tennis pro, a Tuskegee Airman, and survivors of a bloody attack by White Supremacists known as “Ax Handle Saturday.”

The boys asked the kinds of questions that sons might spend a lifetime learning from their fathers--questions about success and failure, being a Black man in a White world, the lure of the streets, pressures to conform, the criminal justice system, fighting discrimination during the civil rights era, what defined Black manhood and masculinity, why so many Black men abandoned their children, how the presence or absence of a father figure shaped these men’s lives.

TODAY

Many of the issues that the older men faced have returned. Back in 2009, the boys thought issues like civil rights and men abandoning their families were problems of the past—not ones they’d have to face. But today these young men are dealing with a different world than they thought they’d be living in--empowered white supremacist groups, abortion bans, violence against minorities, and police profiling—all of which bring renewed challenges. The documentary will reunite the young men with the men they interviewed for new discussions and insights into navigating the world now as men. In a world of bad news, these conversations with those who walked similar paths before them will seek to offer a way through.