A Black Man Can, and So Can You: A Snippet of Brandon Frame's Super Story

By: Ethan Brisby
@ethanbrisby 
+Ethan Brisby 
Youtube: Ethan Brisby

No one really knows what happens when Clark Kent enters a phone booth and comes out as Super Man; faster than a speeding bullet with x-ray vision, and virtually limitless human strength. Things are different for TheBlackManCan Founder and Chief Visionary Officer, Brandon Frame. Frame credits his early career success to remaining true to the process.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Frame and talk about, among other things, growing up in Hartford, his faith, the Morehouse days, and his emerging enterprise, TheBlackManCan.

For those of you unfamiliar, TheBlackManCan is an online platform created to showcase positive images of black men. Brandon admits that early on he asked himself would people really be interested in seeing positive images of everyday black men. After all, it takes but a five minute montage of the nightly news to fill your mind with crimes, hate, and propaganda related to black males. It did not take long for his questions to be answered.

“I knew we were on to something when publicists started hitting me up to get their clients showcased on the site,” Frame said.

Since its inception in April 2010, TheBlackManCan has gone on to become a force not only in Frame’s home town of Hartford, Connecticut, but in cities like New York and Baltimore. Brandon regularly speaks on college campuses spreading a message about excellence. He’s been a guest at The University of Connecticut, Nichols College, and his alma mater, Morehouse College, to name a few.

“I always tell my students and audiences I speak with to chase excellence with impeccable effort,” Frame told me.

That impeccable effort, he himself shows is catching the attention of media outlets as well. Frame is quickly becoming a go-to guy on issues related to increasing awareness about the plight of the current generation of African American males. In just the last three months he’s been profiled, featured, or made an appearance in well-known media circles. Most recently he appeared in Jet and Black Enterprise magazines. He recently found himself in front of cameras speaking about black males on NBC New York and The Stan Simpson Show on Fox Connecticut.  Brandon, a modest man, admits for him it just comes with the territory.

“I’m just out here chillin,’ man. Just a regular Black Man doing the work,” he said. “I get media calls, and then I’m right back to doing the work. I like being a practitioner; being on the ground.”

In his role as Clark Kent, Brandon Frame is the Director of Business Partnerships and Development at High School, Inc. I visited High School, Inc. last spring, and it is unlike any other high school I’ve ever seen. The school prepares its majority minority student population for careers in insurance and financial services. Its curriculum includes global excursions, student pairing with local CEOs, and this summer 42 students received internships-giving them invaluable exposure to the professional world.

“The school is about building overall cultural and social capital and raising overall achievement,” Frame explains.

When you meet Brandon, see the work he does, and speak with him about his visions for High School, Inc. and TheBlackManCan, you’d never know he grew up in poverty just like any other inner city kid. Between his mother and his dad, whom he met when he was 18, there are ten brothers and sisters. Although poor, Brandon admits, he never really knew he did not have much until he saw how much other people had.

“We grew up working poor. Mom’s been evicted. We were on Section 8, food stamps, all of that. You know, all the things that come with that subset of society,” he describes.

This is where the depth of this profile lives. Frame’s story is an example of what can happen for young black males all over America when they respect the process despite coming from such humble beginnings. In a country where inner city issues are not on the table at the level many argue that they should be, Brandon is becoming a poster child for boot strapping your way out of poverty and into the life you want for yourself.

He credits his time at Morehouse, a college he admits, until meeting close friend Marcus Blackwell, he had only heard about on Boys in the Hood, for molding him into the man he is today.

“Morehouse is everything to me. From the day I walked on campus,” he states. “Leaving was bittersweet, but I knew I had received enough in my four years to leave the gates of Mother Morehouse and conquer the world.”

Morehouse is a private all male liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia noted for producing such innovative leaders and pioneers as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Spike Lee, and Samuel L. Jackson. There is now a new crop of Morehouse Men who call themselves Renaissance Men with a social conscience and global perspective. These men, just as Frame, exemplify the qualities of a new vanguard that is well-read, well-traveled, well-spoken, well-dressed, and well-balanced. These are the pillars the college's 10^th president, Robert Franklin, laid before them during his tenure (2007-2012) leading the institution.

“If I never met Marcus, I doubt I would have ever gone to Morehouse. I was struck when his father, who had also attended Morehouse, told him the only way he could go to any other college was if he got scholarships to pay his way,” Frames boldly states.

Despite his Morehouse molding, I was still dazzled by the fact that he did not meet his father until he was 18, he grew up poor in inner city Hartford, Connecticut, and somehow still managed to overcome adversity and defeat. While he is not the first to face such odds, his story is unique and has to be told in times such as these. Brandon now stands before audiences and boldly professes, yes, a black man can. With so many stories of mass incarceration and seemingly perpetual cycles of poverty, I asked him about his values.

“A word that’s closely associated with me as a human being is consistency. My grandfather and my grandmother really played a vital role in my understanding that through my development.”

Beyond the mortal limits of Brandon’s abilities he is also a Christian man of faith. There is a growing population of young professionals and Echo Boomers who do not subscribe to traditional religious sects; Brandon is a part of that population. He instead makes an effort to find relevance in the message as it relates to his personal story. Above all, on the topic of faith, Frame says he walks with a spirit of humility and thanksgiving.

“I count the blessings I see, and the ones I cannot see,” he says.

Like any child who has achieved a level of intra-generational mobility, Brandon can point to a few moments that really began to affirm his idea of him becoming something special. He light-heartedly told me for him it was in middle school when that moment occurred.

“The thing that put me in the thought process that I could be something special and successful came in middle school. I was voted 'Most Likely to Succeed.' I was mad though, I wanted the girls to vote me 'Best Looking,'" he explains.

He then went on to describe how his mother assured him being voted “Most Likely to Succeed” was far more of a compliment than “Best Looking.”  One thing is for sure though, his middle school and later high school classmates that voted Frame “Most Likely to Succeed” got it right. The sky is the limit for Brandon who is not yet 26 years old.

Frame most recently published his first book, “Define Yourself, Redefine the World: A Guided Journal for Black Boys and Men.” When discussing the process of producing his first piece of literature, Frame paused abruptly and shouted, “Praise to Jovonna Rodriguez of Literacy Lives.” Rodriguez is the editor of the journal, and, as with most things, she’s one of the behind-the-scenes people that made the engines on this project go, but gets little attention.

In creating “Define Yourself Redefine the World,” Frame says he began with the framework of wanting to find a way to get the content of TheBlackManCan put into print. He wanted to give young men a way to write their thoughts, because “Writing is therapeutic,” he explains.

The body of work Brandon is putting together is certain to have his name synonymous with the new crop of African American social justice pioneers. In the future, he hopes to have his “BlackManCan Awards” run as a live televised show. Brandon is also considering furthering his education with the PhD option or potentially attending such schools as Stanford, Virginia or Boston College to pursue a dual master’s degree, in Business Administration and Education. 

In the end, this American success story believes his pinnacle would be serving as a college president. The way I see it, it will only cost him some time to get to those points, and he’s no stranger to doing the work.

We may never know what makes Super Man Super Man, but we can be assured that to go from ashy to classy it takes hard work. Listen to the words of Brandon Frame.

“We live in an age of immediate gratification. As my virtual mentor Lisa Nicole Bell shared with me, it’s important to respect the process”
 

For more information about the TheBlackManCan or to purchase a copy of “Define Yourself Redefine the World: A Guided Journal for Black Boys and Men” visit theblackmancan.org

Ethan Brisby is a blogger, public speaker, and licensed real estate sales professional based in Austin, Texas. Brandon’s story is part of a series Ethan is producing to share inspirational stories of young professionals who are modern day trendsetters.