If you think we are in a recession, you must be broke!

June 15, 2009

I cringe when I hear the word recession. The mental threshold it has taken on not only American minds but also the world’s interconnected economy is like living September 11 everyday. Fear of devastation and little hope is the outlook for urban communities, suburbs, and central business districts alike. It was not until the big bad recession blew down my mother’s hair salon that I would realize the long-term impact of slowed down economic activity over a sustained period. My mother, who raised me as a single parent had owned Rose’s Affordable Hairstyles for nearly two decades, but even that, was not enough to save her from the extra toil of losing your economic backbone.

With this in mind, I am a third year student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia where I will earn a Bachelor’s of Art in Urban Studies in May 2010. Mr. Recession however has continued to make this task a daunted one in the financial aid office. When spring 2009 semester came full swing, students began to realize the financial pressure that was being placed on a college that prides itself on providing the best possible education for African American males. I was one of the many students to dark the door of Jackie Jackson, United Negro College Fund coordinator and James Stotts, Financial Aid Director looking for emergency funding in this dire time of need.

In February, more than 20% of students enrolled had their classes purged. So with hundreds of my brothers being sent home for failure to pay tuition, I received help to bring my balance to 60% paid, which left me still knee deep in quick sand needing more than $10,000 by May to continue pursuit of a dream to walk the stage on the same campus lawn Martin Luther King had sauntered in 1948.

As March approached, tension began to build as neighboring Clark Atlanta University would cut nearly half of its staff leaving students to scramble for replacement classes as their professors were told they would not be obtained four weeks into the semester. When Morehouse followed suit and relieved some 25 adjunct professors, Dr. Kimberly Sutton, a single mother and long time sociology professor whom I had taken a class with the previous semester would fall victim of the long arm of a recession some title “The AIG story.”  

Back home in Bryan, Texas my mother who still may not know who AIG is began to make ends meet by working three jobs to support a one income family of three. In the mornings, she would wake up at 7am to assist an elderly deaf and mute woman. This was nothing new, as this job had become a hobby of hers, but after aiding with Miss Ola, she dashed home and humbly put on the uniform of a school cafeteria worker.

The thing my mother told me that bothered her most was that at 47, for the first time in her life, she could not pay her bills on time, but she would work as many as 14 hours a day now to make amends with such short comings. In addition to home health care and a local school cafeteria, my mother would also find part time work at a TJ Maxx retail-clothing store in nearby College Station, Texas.

When I returned home in May from my semester I began to see the devastation she was facing in these cataclysmic economic times. On the other hand, as I began to tell my story to more people at the college, I began to realize that although money is tight there is indeed funding available for those who practice persistence. I wrote letters to possible donors, visited financial aid three times a week while balancing 19 hours of course work, an internship at the Georgia House of Representatives, and a job at Robert Woodruff Library. These experiences have forced me a socialist at heart to develop a mind of a capitalist in these times of survival of the fittest.

As I speak with you now, I still am $3,500 shy of the tuition needed to be able to register for classes in the fall. I know the pace of our nation’s economy is changing and the speed limit will soon increase. As an Urban Studies major, I have learned a great deal in and out of the classroom about the bold realities we face at the lowest levels both in and out of a recession. The streets of Atlanta are filled with those who have nothing. There are entire neighborhoods empty due to the countless stories of foreclosures. For my mother and I, my decision to return to college is teaching us a lesson embedded in happiness beyond classrooms and hair salons. A time when sun up to sun down speaks to another day’s journey involving a sense of tenacity only rivaled by the joys of returning to the mountain top economically, socially, and at a pace we can once again feel comfortable traveling.