(BALTIMORE – May 3, 2025) – We all know the landscape. You can go right, or you can go left. It’s that simple. Those in the middle – on the fence – ayeee! You may as well go home. For all of my young brothers in Baltimore, if there is one single piece of advice I can think of, it’s travel. See the world. Go to Africa, Europe, South America, Wisconsin, California – just go and see how other people live. Travel provides the greatest education, one you will never find in a book. One thing you get is a better appreciation for Baltimore. Another is the experience of seeing people from other places worldwide.
Too often, we stay stuck in a 6-square-block radius. I know people in East Baltimore who have never been on the Westside, and vice versa. Some have never been to Baltimore County, let alone Washington, DC. Truth!
Yep! I said it! Get the heck on a bus, train, or plane, in a car, and go! In the illustrious words of my brother from another mother, Dr. David Miller, “Life is bigger than a trip to Mondawmin Mall, a chicken box, and a jumbo half-n-half.” That still cracks me up 25 years later.
From the time a young brother in Baltimore steps off the porch, he has critical decisions to make. We all know how challenged our community is. And while we have 70% single-mother households, quite different from the 40s, 50s, and 60s, when we were the most married community in America, men do step up. Not boys. Not adult males. Men! Strong Black men who fill the gap. They work every day to make our community better.
Want to see them in action? Check out We Our Us. And they are but the tip of the spear. There’s also I AM MENtality with Darren Rogers. There’s James Mosher Baseball, the oldest Black baseball league for youth in America. Girls play there, too! There’s Citywide Youth Development at the EMAGE Center at 2132 W. North Avenue, home of Made in Bmore Clothing and Frozen Desert Sorbet in the middle of a $45 million investment in the area called WNADA and ushered along by Senator Antonio Hayes, a Black man.
There’s Marvin McDowell’s No Hooks Before Books at UMAR Boxing and Upton Boxing, Home of Coach Calvin, Coach Kenny, and of course, the star of the show, Gervonta “Tank” Davis. They’re all Black men. There’s Mack Lewis Boxing on the Eastside, home of a former IBF Light Middleweight champion, Vince Pettway. There’s Leon Purnell at the Men and Families Center, also in East Baltimore at 2222 Kennedy Street.
Despite imagery and stats which suggest otherwise, I think the Black community in Baltimore is alive and well. A big reason is that countless Black men out here are holding it together. Countless brothers are coaches for sports teams. Other brothers organize men’s rap sessions. Our mosques and churches have a lot of programs, activities, and even support groups with good, Black men who mentor, who step up, who see something that needs to be done and they do it. They don’t want applause. Some don’t want social media. But they do the work.
That’s the village I know – the one that raised me. Shout-out to Baba Charlie Dugger. Whatever is needed is provided. That’s the Baltimore I was raised in. And so, even though it’s a very complicated world for our young brothers to navigate, we have to help every single one of them find their gifts and their purpose. We must show them that as long as there is life, there is hope. Where one can’t, another can. There’s always a way. That’s the power of our village. Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one.
And on that note, get a passport!
