Speaker 1: And we returned to our American stories. Up next the
Speaker 1: story of Danishia Allen, a senior fellow at the American
Speaker 1: Federation for Children. Let's get into the story. Here's Denisha.
Speaker 2: All growing up.
Speaker 3: I remember being a little kid and seeing vibrants and
Speaker 3: hearing stories of how the community was excited and people
Speaker 3: were engaged and they knew one another. The east side
Speaker 3: of Jacksonville where I grew up, it's called the Urban Corus.
Speaker 3: Sits right along the Saint John's where the Jacksonville Jaguars play,
Speaker 3: so very close to where city life is. The baseball
Speaker 3: stadium is maybe like a couple blocks from there, and
Speaker 3: I remember or we would go to the to the
Speaker 3: football games. We would go to the back baseball games,
Speaker 3: not that we could afford it, but like community members
Speaker 3: would pass out stuff, there will be cookouts. People knew
Speaker 3: each other by name. It was a place where community
Speaker 3: members really thrived. My godmother, she would tell me stories like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: uncle Cox, he used to have a barber shop right here.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, this place right here, which n Looking at
Speaker 3: the buildings, you would never think that it was a
Speaker 3: business of any sort because it was just an abandoned building.
Speaker 2: But there was this.
Speaker 3: This culture, and all of a sudden that stuff stopped.
Speaker 4: For top story tonight, that deadly shooting on the East
Speaker 4: Side area, nightclubs and bars are where law enforcement is
Speaker 4: finding a younger generation of people in possession of a
Speaker 4: new drug called n nd I meta pensylon hydrochloride.
Speaker 2: People stopped having those cookouts.
Speaker 3: Drug and alcohol abuse started to increase, and more people,
Speaker 3: instead of going to work, were just walking around the
Speaker 3: neighborhood aimlessly looking for where they can I guess, get
Speaker 3: their next hit. Gang violence increased, and my family was, uh,
Speaker 3: I'm assuming a part of that. I would walk around
Speaker 3: the neighborhood and people wouldn't know me, you know, they
Speaker 3: would say, oh, that's such and such a little daughter.
Speaker 3: You don't mess with the Merriweathers. They're gonna get you.
Speaker 3: I wore my last name Merriwether as a badge of
Speaker 3: honor because everybody knew who I was. Everybody knew my family,
Speaker 3: and I didn't think it was you know, I thought
Speaker 3: it was great, but unfortunately it also followed me other
Speaker 3: places that followed me into like the after school program.
Speaker 2: It followed me into school.
Speaker 3: People knew the Merriweathers and not in a good way.
Speaker 2: How I grew up.
Speaker 3: You don't aks adults questions, y, You just say okay,
Speaker 3: you know, like you don't ask some questions. If things
Speaker 3: are happening, you just you know, you you just go
Speaker 3: along with what's happening. So I never really asked too
Speaker 3: many questions about what was happening around me. I just
Speaker 3: observed a lot of things and put my head down
Speaker 3: and say, yes, ma'am. So my biological dad, I didn't
Speaker 3: ask a lot of questions about him. But supposedly the
Speaker 3: dad that I grew up with was not my biological father.
Speaker 3: I heard stories about how she just went to problem
Speaker 3: with this nice young man. He was so nice and
Speaker 3: now here you are. And I was just like always
Speaker 3: intrigued about this story because I never heard much about it.
Speaker 3: But supposedly, at one moment his name was Ernest, then
Speaker 3: at another moment his name was Dennis.
Speaker 2: So I I I my biological dad.
Speaker 3: Up until even today, I'm still very cloudy and blurry.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, but I do remember this one scene
Speaker 3: of a guy showing up at our house. It was
Speaker 3: the hotel, showing up at the hotel, and he brought
Speaker 3: me a necklace and I was like, thanks, you know,
Speaker 3: went back to playing, and my mom said, oh, that
Speaker 3: was your biological dad, but you better not tell your
Speaker 3: step dad that he showed up. And I was like, yes, ma'am,
Speaker 3: because you do not aks questions about what is going on.
Speaker 3: So I lived all growing up with my stepdad, who
Speaker 3: I thought up until that moment was my biological father.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we all moved from hotel room to this room.
Speaker 3: On the weekends, I would go with my godmother, who
Speaker 3: was actually friends. Her daughters were friends with my mom
Speaker 3: at sixteen in high school, they were all friends. The
Speaker 3: story gets very confusing most times when I tell people
Speaker 3: this story, they're like, wait, what, how did you meet
Speaker 3: your godmother? Well, my mom had me at sixteen. She
Speaker 3: obviously had friends, and she still wanted to party so
Speaker 3: she could go and kind of reclaim her childhood, and
Speaker 3: so she left me with one of her friend's mom
Speaker 3: And so that's how I became in the realm of
Speaker 3: this miraculous woman who I call my godmother. Head was
Speaker 3: not christened, and.
Speaker 2: She was not like.
Speaker 3: This was a very informal relationship, like here's a baby,
Speaker 3: can you take care of this baby? And it wasn't
Speaker 3: until I was about round one. My godmother told my
Speaker 3: biological mom, listen, just leave her here, go out and
Speaker 3: have your life. Go out and do what you want.
Speaker 3: But coming in at three in the morning to pick
Speaker 3: her up. This in and out is not gonna work.
Speaker 3: So just leave her here, come back when you're ready
Speaker 3: to get her, and we'll go from there. And she did,
Speaker 3: and she didn't show back up until like maybe a
Speaker 3: few years later. Wanted to take me back. They went
Speaker 3: to court. They had joint custody of me. M So
Speaker 3: I was going back and forth between my godmother's house
Speaker 3: and my biological mother's house, back and forth, back and forth,
Speaker 3: back and forth. I remember crying all the time because
Speaker 3: I did not want to go back to my mom's house.
Speaker 3: Every Sunday I just would ball. By the time I
Speaker 3: would get home to my mom's house, she would beat
Speaker 3: me and tell me just stop crying, just be quiet,
Speaker 3: You're not gonna go back. And it had gotten kind
Speaker 3: of bad that I would skip weekends of not going
Speaker 3: to see my godmother because the previous weekend had just
Speaker 3: been so bad and I would not wanna come back
Speaker 3: to live with my biological mom. So she would say,
Speaker 3: you're gonna skip the next weekend as punishment for not
Speaker 3: wanting to come back at my godmother's house. I was
Speaker 3: pretty much the only child. Her kids were grown, her
Speaker 3: kids were off in the military and college, and I
Speaker 3: had everything. I was spoiled. It was fantastic, went to church,
Speaker 3: had stability, just she had a set of goals. She
Speaker 3: held me to her standard. She had a parenting skill.
Speaker 2: She was a mother.
Speaker 3: So I was moving, moving, moving back and forth, back
Speaker 3: and forth, and at thirteen, I was by that time,
Speaker 3: i'd failed the third grade twice, so it was it
Speaker 3: was pretty bad. My favorite aunt, she, what I didn't know,
Speaker 3: was pretty much the orchestrator of getting me into my
Speaker 3: godmother's home and helping out with the court. She was
Speaker 3: a security guard at the courtroom and she knew everyone there,
Speaker 3: and so she was pretty much the behind the scenes
Speaker 3: advocate for me, and I didn't know that. When I
Speaker 3: was thirteen, she told me, you know, you don't have
Speaker 3: to stay with her, you can leave. And I looked
Speaker 3: at her, I'm like, she's my mother, Like what am
Speaker 3: I gonna do? I can't just not stay with her?
Speaker 3: She said, you can, you can, and something happened. I
Speaker 3: can't even remember. To this day. What But I looked
Speaker 3: at my biological mother like right in the eye. She
Speaker 3: made me so upset one day and I told her
Speaker 3: I am not coming back. I am not coming back here.
Speaker 3: I do not wanna stay with you anymore. And she
Speaker 3: cursed me out and she told me to leave, like
Speaker 3: don't come back, okay, leave And it was the best
Speaker 3: thing that could have ever happened. I felt so liberated.
Speaker 3: This is at thirteen, Like I can't imagine any thirteen
Speaker 3: year old I looking back, I'm like it was thirteen,
Speaker 3: but I want it better, like I want it more.
Speaker 3: I saw on the weekends, just two days sometimes out
Speaker 3: of a week, how other people lived. And I was jealous,
Speaker 3: absolutely jealous.
Speaker 1: And you've been listening to Danisha Allan tell her story.
Speaker 1: She grows up in a tough part of Jacksonville. Biological
Speaker 1: dad out of the picture, biological mom out of the
Speaker 1: picture for a long time, comes back into her life
Speaker 1: after leaving her daughter with a quote godmother who actually
Speaker 1: became the mother, well, the mother that Danisha deserved. When
Speaker 1: we come back more of Danisha Allen's story here on
Speaker 1: our American stories, and we returned to our American stories
Speaker 1: in Tanisha Allen's story. When we last left off, Denisha
Speaker 1: was telling us about her rough childhood in the city
Speaker 1: of Jacksonville, Florida. Denisia now turns to her education. Let's
Speaker 1: return to her story.
Speaker 3: I was a well I wouldn't say terrible, but I
Speaker 3: would not want me as a student. My first education memory,
Speaker 3: I think I was in about the second grade and
Speaker 3: I had to use the restroom and I asked my teacher, like,
Speaker 3: can I go to the restroom? And she said no,
Speaker 3: and I was like excuse me, Like so I'm sitting
Speaker 3: there and like raising my hand. I'm like, okay, maybe
Speaker 3: this is the type of teacher. She's like lame and
Speaker 3: she wants you to raise your hand. I remember like
Speaker 3: thinking these as a second girl, like okay, i'm'a raise
Speaker 3: my hand so I can go to the restrooms. I'm
Speaker 3: raise my hand, wiggling in my seat, trying to get
Speaker 3: this lady's attention. And she did not answer my hand,
Speaker 3: and I yelled again, I have to go to the restroom,
Speaker 3: and she said no. When I ask you to do something,
Speaker 3: you don't do it. But now you want me to
Speaker 3: do something for you, and so no, you're not going
Speaker 3: to the restroom, and I walked out.
Speaker 2: I walked out of the classroom. I was like, peace. Think.
Speaker 3: I stayed in the restroom for like maybe ten fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: Came back strutting like can't tell me what I'm not
Speaker 3: gonna do a stupid teacher, and I sat down.
Speaker 2: She told me get out and I was like no.
Speaker 2: She's like, get out and go.
Speaker 3: To Bertha blah. I was like no, and she would
Speaker 3: pick me up and started to like try to pull
Speaker 3: me out of the class. I remember like grabbing on
Speaker 3: to the table, grabbing onto the wall, like crying, screaming,
Speaker 3: kicking her, trying to stay in class, and she won.
Speaker 3: She like took me in principal's office. I spent most
Speaker 3: of my time in the principal's office. But yeah, that's
Speaker 3: my earliest memory of school. We didn't really go to school.
Speaker 3: If my mom was tired, she didn't tug us to
Speaker 3: the bus stop, and we would just sleep in its
Speaker 3: like cool. If it was raining outside, we didn't go
Speaker 3: to school. If it was too hot, we didn't go
Speaker 3: to school. So we weren't really in school a lot.
Speaker 3: I remember my mom. She went to jail a couple times.
Speaker 3: Because we weren't going to school. I r I remember
Speaker 3: that because then all of a sudden, it was like,
Speaker 3: get y'all home, you know, bleep the bleeps out of here,
Speaker 3: and just go just walk to school. I don't care.
Speaker 3: I wasn't really in school, And when I was in school,
Speaker 3: I hated being there. We changed so much that there
Speaker 3: was never any significant reason for me to make friends
Speaker 3: like my teachers, and the teachers didn't like didn't.
Speaker 2: Like us at all. They heard Merriweather.
Speaker 3: Was coming through the door and they were just like,
Speaker 3: sit down, you know, at least that's how it seemed.
Speaker 3: Uh So, the the standard was very low for me
Speaker 3: to do well, and I didn't do well. I was
Speaker 3: very behind. I remember that. I remember getting picked on.
Speaker 3: I remember trying to read and having kids laugh at me,
Speaker 3: and I remember a lot of laughing at me. So
Speaker 3: by the third grade, there's the test, third grade tests
Speaker 3: that you have to take in order to pass to
Speaker 3: the next grade in Florida, and I failed the test,
Speaker 3: and so that meant I had to either do summer
Speaker 3: school or repeat the third grade. To do summer school,
Speaker 3: all that was required was for my guardian my mother
Speaker 3: to sign a piece of paper. I would still be
Speaker 3: able to take the bus, I would still be able
Speaker 3: to eat school launch just literally school during the summertime.
Speaker 3: She didn't sign papers, just didn't sign. So I failed
Speaker 3: third grade. That next year I failed again from the
Speaker 3: same thing. Just didn't get a piece of paper signed,
Speaker 3: couldn't read.
Speaker 2: It was a low in math.
Speaker 3: And fourth grade, I was accepted into what was called
Speaker 3: the Star program, and it's some acronym for something, but
Speaker 3: basically students getting into their right grade program. And I
Speaker 3: was in a classroom with people who were three and
Speaker 3: four grades behind. And this is in fourth grade. We
Speaker 3: were the special population, the special kids in the school.
Speaker 3: And so in the fourth grade, I was like, I
Speaker 3: have to do this, you know, I. I have to
Speaker 3: do well.
Speaker 2: And there was.
Speaker 3: This talent show. It was a talent show. I wanted
Speaker 3: to participate. I remember I wanted to sing this song
Speaker 3: by Yolanda Adams and I practiced so much. I was
Speaker 3: also very bad. So my teacher would threaten me, Denisha,
Speaker 3: if you do not do well, if you do not
Speaker 3: be good, you're gonna get kicked out of the talent show.
Speaker 3: I would write myself notes, Deniseha, do not talk in
Speaker 3: class deniseha, do not talk, be good, just pages and
Speaker 3: pages and pages. I failed, obviously. When the time came
Speaker 3: right before I was gonna go on, he told me, no,
Speaker 3: what you thought you were gonna participate in a talent show?
Speaker 3: No you you you were terrible, like absolutely not hm
Speaker 3: I W I was distraught, and from that moment, I
Speaker 3: just remember this click going off in my head of
Speaker 3: just anger, frustration at every single last teacher. No one
Speaker 3: seemed to really want to help me. Everyone just seemed
Speaker 3: to just criticize me all the time. From early on
Speaker 3: when I would just walk in the classroom and sigh,
Speaker 3: nobody was really like actually trying to help. It was
Speaker 3: just because of your actions these uh consequences. We're not
Speaker 3: gonna try to figure out why you acting like this.
Speaker 3: Just no. I think that was the moment in my
Speaker 3: mind when I was like, these crappy teachers, These people
Speaker 3: don't care. They don't really care about me, so I
Speaker 3: don't care either. And by the end of that year
Speaker 3: in the fourth grade, I didn't pass the program.
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to go to my right grade.
Speaker 3: Again. I was just so so frustrated, and that was
Speaker 3: when I was like, you know, this is just some
Speaker 3: place I have to be so that my mom doesn't
Speaker 3: go to jail. My mom dropped out of high school.
Speaker 3: I have many, many family members who dropped out of school,
Speaker 3: and I was beginning to see why in the summer
Speaker 3: before my sixth grade year. That was during the same
Speaker 3: time when I told my mom that I did not
Speaker 3: wanna stay with her anymore. Things at home had just
Speaker 3: gotten so terrible and I could live with my godmother.
Speaker 3: And my godmother was She's just my heart. She wanted
Speaker 3: to find a good place for me all the way around.
Speaker 3: That year was probably the best time of my life.
Speaker 3: She wanted me to go to the church's school. By
Speaker 3: that time, the church in my childhood church, the church
Speaker 3: that we had been attending i'd come to with her
Speaker 3: on the weekends, they built a school and she wanted
Speaker 3: me to.
Speaker 2: Go to that school.
Speaker 3: Of course, she didn't have no way to pay for
Speaker 3: that school. We got a scholarship, and the summer before
Speaker 3: I started, I had to take a test to see
Speaker 3: what level I was on. I was very low, needless
Speaker 3: to say, and one of my teachers she agreed to
Speaker 3: meet with me. I was not just low in reading,
Speaker 3: I was low in math. I didn't know my times tables.
Speaker 3: She met with me one on one. I would go
Speaker 3: to her house during the summer. I would stay after
Speaker 3: school when she was setting up for the school year.
Speaker 2: It was very different.
Speaker 1: And you're listening to Denisha Allen, a senior fellow at
Speaker 1: the American Federation for Children, and you're beginning to understand
Speaker 1: why she works at a place with that name. Education.
Speaker 1: She was so important in her life when it became important,
Speaker 1: but for much of her early life it wasn't. She
Speaker 1: was left behind, left behind, failure of filling out paperwork
Speaker 1: by a mom. What just wretched circumstances for a kid
Speaker 1: to find herself. And then that godmother, that godmother who
Speaker 1: saved her. When we come back more of Denisha Allen's
Speaker 1: story here on our American Stories. And we returned to
Speaker 1: our American Stories and the final portion of Danisha Allen's story.
Speaker 1: When we last left off, Tanisha was telling us about
Speaker 1: her early education in the public schools of Jackson, Florida.
Speaker 1: Things simply put, we're not good until people started to
Speaker 1: pour into her. Let's get back to the story here again.
Speaker 1: He's Denisiha Allen.
Speaker 3: I thought it was just going to be a much
Speaker 3: funny games, to be honest, but we really she really,
Speaker 3: I don't know what it's saying. Is crack the whip?
Speaker 3: I don't know. But we'd studied and I learned my
Speaker 3: times tables I was reading. She did not let up.
Speaker 3: She was a student at Jacksonville University, and I remember
Speaker 3: going with her to her classes too. That was my
Speaker 3: life during the summer. Although I was still kind of
Speaker 3: nervous about the start of the year at this new school,
Speaker 3: I was kind of used to going to a new school,
Speaker 3: though I knew the parade how things were gonna play out.
Speaker 3: The teachers were gonna act like they were so happy
Speaker 3: to be there, and they would smile greet us. The
Speaker 3: classrooms would be so beautiful with the freshest, you know, decorations,
Speaker 3: but it would wear off.
Speaker 2: That was just how it went.
Speaker 3: Sure enough, on my first day of school, the teachers
Speaker 3: were there greeting us with big smiles, hugging everybody. The
Speaker 3: classrooms were beat and I was like, yeah, I know
Speaker 3: this song very well, and the song is gonna end.
Speaker 3: The song never ended. Literally every day until I graduated,
Speaker 3: teachers were doing the same thing. I was always very shocked,
Speaker 3: even til I graduated, it was still a bit unsettling
Speaker 3: that it never stopped. I was in a class with students,
Speaker 3: of course, who were all younger than me, and I
Speaker 3: had my guard up because I knew what was gonna come.
Speaker 3: Teacher would call on me to read. They would laugh
Speaker 3: at me, and I would have to claim my space
Speaker 3: and let people know that I am nothing to mess with, Like,
Speaker 3: do not mess with me. I remember my teacher calling
Speaker 3: on me to read, and I s was still stumbling.
Speaker 3: Nobody laughed. I looked around and was waiting, like waiting
Speaker 3: to cut someone, you know, with my eyes and like
Speaker 3: get ready for the playground, Like I was trying to
Speaker 3: figure out who the big dog in a class was
Speaker 3: so that I could like bring them down. Nobody laughed
Speaker 3: at me, even a couple students. They would voluntarily like
Speaker 3: try to help me. My sixth grade teacher, though she
Speaker 3: invested as much or probably more in me as well students.
Speaker 3: Typically how school goes if people forgot m a teacher
Speaker 3: will open up the book and say who wants to
Speaker 3: read chapter one. The students will then raise their hand,
Speaker 3: and the teacher will pick from the students who raised
Speaker 3: their hand to read the paragraph in the book. I
Speaker 3: never rose my hand. She would always call on me.
Speaker 3: So every time we had to read, she would call
Speaker 3: on me. I would stumble, stumble, stumble, stumble, until one
Speaker 3: day I didn't. And this was literally like the first
Speaker 3: nine weeks. It seemed like my life took a one
Speaker 3: eighty turn. The name of the school is Expirit of Course,
Speaker 3: Center for Learning. We're learning is a joy. Excellence is
Speaker 3: the norm, and superiority is our goal. That's the school's model.
Speaker 3: We literally like had to recite it all the time.
Speaker 3: We had a spirit of excellence. We also had demerits,
Speaker 3: which I was like, what are these? You know where
Speaker 3: I come from, anything that's different from normal? We say,
Speaker 3: what is this white people's stuff? You know? The culture
Speaker 3: was different. I wasn't used to the culture. They held
Speaker 3: you to a standard. Every kid in my class. It
Speaker 3: was a very small C school. I think I had
Speaker 3: about seven or eight kids in my sixth grade class.
Speaker 3: All of them were on honor roll. I was like
Speaker 3: literally the only dumb kid, and I was like, I
Speaker 3: cannot be the only dumb kid. Whereas where I was at,
Speaker 3: everybody was feeling. The teachers expected for everyone to be
Speaker 3: if you gotta see you were like, you need to
Speaker 3: be more like him, you know.
Speaker 2: It was just it was so different.
Speaker 3: And so these kids, they were all very smart, they
Speaker 3: were all very nice and kind, and I was like this,
Speaker 3: you know, pit bull doll who just came off the street.
Speaker 3: And they they didn't look at me like I was weird,
Speaker 3: but they I think they knew in their mind, like
Speaker 3: we came here like that too, you know, like you
Speaker 3: will change, you know, kind of this weird environment. But
Speaker 3: this one time I was in ISSP in school suspension.
Speaker 3: The guy who was over it this time, he was
Speaker 3: also a part of the church. He was a fireman
Speaker 3: and I think he was in the reserves or something.
Speaker 2: But this was this big black guy.
Speaker 3: He was in the military and a firefighter. I didn't
Speaker 3: understand how he did them both, but that's what he
Speaker 3: told us all. And I just knew he was big,
Speaker 3: intall just towered over over me. He was in charge
Speaker 3: of giving me my work and just checking in on
Speaker 3: me that time, and in school suspension, he came to
Speaker 3: me and he said, Denisha, when is this gonna stop?
Speaker 3: When are you gonna change this? When are you gonna
Speaker 3: stop acting like this? Do you want to be in jail?
Speaker 3: Do you wanna go to jail? I forget how you
Speaker 3: phrased it, but it it was something along. It was like,
Speaker 3: do you wanna go to jail? Do you wanna be
Speaker 3: in jail? And I like started crying. I was like
Speaker 3: nothing before it had got to me. You know, I
Speaker 3: don't care. You can drag me out of the classroom,
Speaker 3: you can s send me home, call me stupid, fail me,
Speaker 3: fail me again, take away something that's so important to me.
Speaker 3: My life is crab. You know. I N I D
Speaker 3: D didn't see the meaning in at thirteen. My life
Speaker 3: was just very meaningless and I was just taking part
Speaker 3: in whatever it through because I had to. I had
Speaker 3: no control. And in that statement, I remember even like now,
Speaker 3: I'm like uh, because I realized that I guess I
Speaker 3: I I didn't have to go to jail, that was
Speaker 3: the norm. And he was asking me, do you want
Speaker 3: to do you want to be in jail because of
Speaker 3: how you're acting? And I think that was like the
Speaker 3: first time that I realized that my actions, like my
Speaker 3: actions like can determine my outcome, not because of everybody else.
Speaker 3: And he was basically telling me that how I decided
Speaker 3: to act all these many many years, I would end
Speaker 3: up being in jail, and I was like, no, that's
Speaker 3: not what I canna, very like childish.
Speaker 2: I don't wanna go to jail.
Speaker 3: No, I don't wanna go to jail. Like no. And
Speaker 3: that's when I decided to lay off the crap and
Speaker 3: to take ownership of my of my behavior to do better.
Speaker 3: And I tried really hard. I tried to do better.
Speaker 3: I I would listen to my teachers, I would get help,
Speaker 3: and by the first nine weeks my grades had risen.
Speaker 3: I went from making d's and f's consistently, maybe a
Speaker 3: C here and there.
Speaker 2: Just like that.
Speaker 3: That year, my seventh grade year, when I was supposed
Speaker 3: to be going into the eighth grade, I did not
Speaker 3: go to the eighth grade class. I went into the
Speaker 3: ninth grade class. I skipped the eighth grade, and that
Speaker 3: ultimately led to me graduating from high school. I don't
Speaker 3: think I would have graduated from high school if I
Speaker 3: had stuck with the district public school. I had seen
Speaker 3: so many of my family member's friends who dropped out.
Speaker 3: I think I would have dropped out too. I would
Speaker 3: have had a baby, and I would have probably been
Speaker 3: working at a McDonald's some fast food place that would
Speaker 3: have been my ultimate success story. Education literally saved my life.
Speaker 3: I became the first in my family to graduate from
Speaker 3: high school. I got a college degree, I went away
Speaker 3: to college, and then I moved to DC to work
Speaker 3: at the US Department of Education. I lived a fairy
Speaker 3: tale life compared to other members in my family, and
Speaker 3: it would not have been possible if I didn't receive
Speaker 3: people who were really invested in my life and in
Speaker 3: my education.
Speaker 1: And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
Speaker 1: by our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to
Speaker 1: Danisha Allen for sharing her story. She works at the
Speaker 1: American Federation for Children and now we know why. Also
Speaker 1: a special thanks to the Philanthropy Roundtable the folks there
Speaker 1: for turning us on to the story. In the Philanthropy
Speaker 1: Roundtable is America's leading advocate to support the causes we
Speaker 1: all believe in. And my goodness, what a story. What
Speaker 1: is it to tell you about the power of one
Speaker 1: adult to love a kid. All of us can have
Speaker 1: that effect. Folks, mentor and help a kid who might
Speaker 1: not have a dad, who might not have a good
Speaker 1: influence in their life. The story of Denisha Allen Hear
Speaker 1: on our American Stories.