From At-Risk to Gentlemen: Reclaiming the Youth of the Mississippi Delta

And we’re back with our American Stories. Up next, we’ll bring you the story of Marks Youth Outreach, a nonprofit organization that started to the work of a few men in Quitman County, which is in the Mississippi Delta, not far from where we broadcast in Oxford, Mississippi, home to all Miss Faulkner, Grisham, and so many other artists to musicians. Just miles away: Presley, Morgan Freeman, and B.B. King. And we broadcast here because it’s one of the most beautiful towns in this country. These men saw a need from mentoring at-risk youth in their community and decided to do something about it. Now you’ll hear from one of those men, Edgar Scullark, with a story of how it all got started.

I was born and raised at the Mississippi Department of Corrections in Parchman, Mississippi. My father was the first African American male ever to be employed there. I was the first African American child born to an African American couple at the Mississippi Department of Corrections. I lived there for thirty years. I was employed there for ten years. I was also employed in the Mississippi Army National Guard and pastoring for twenty-six years now, and I am an advocate for youth. My childhood is a scary childhood. I was bullied in school, I was bullied at home. My father was a functioning alcoholic. I can remember times where I have seen my father physically abused my mother. He used to verbally abuse us and things of that nature, to them portant place where it calls me to become insecure in who I was. When I was younger, my father, now, we were worse enemies. To see my mother treated the way she was treated by someone who I should love and adore; that I began to hate. And when I was eight years old, I was going deaf and did not know it.

My father and mother began to really scream at me because they thought that I was being just disrespectful and disobedient. As long as they were in front of me and I can see them face-to-face, I could hear what they were saying because I was reading their lips. But I didn’t know this. I was literally reading lips to function. If they were behind me giving me instructions, I was not hearing them well. And there were times that I got spanked because they thought that I was being disrespectful. One Friday night we were at church, my father screamed at me, and somewhere or another, sound escaped over into my ear in the ear, and I started shaking. They knew something was wrong. Then they took me to the doctor’s office that next week. If they would have kept me out of the doctor’s office too much longer, I would have gone permanently deaf. I also had of every bad speech impediment. I started real bad anything that was more than one syllable. By way, pack of lunch because I’m going to sit there. And so we did not wear the finer attire. Matter of fact, I used to put cardboard in the bottom of my shoes to keep them wearing holes in my socks. That’s the type of life that I lived. So in the classroom, I wanted to be unseen. So all of these things kind of carved an insecure individual.

So from understanding of just who I was as a kid, from about the fourth grade, so the eleven read. Those were horror years for me. I really did not like being in public places, and God forbid, public speaking. So oftentimes, how young people are experiencing traumatic experiences at home, so by the time they get to school, they’ve gone into “unpack” mode. So they’ve packed so many emotional entanglements at home, and then by the time they get to school, they’re trying to reason with what happened. And a lot of children are being called bad. But a lot of our children are not bad. Our children have had bad things happened to them. And if you put something in a bottle, and if you put that cap on that bottle, soon or later, the topics them come off. And that’s what’s happening with so many of our young people. They are literally exploding emotionally. They are just trying to reason with the bad things that have happened to them. And I just believe that if we can just get our hands on those young, impressionable minds, then we can caught arise that bleed of destructive thoughts, the unhealthy emotions, and the lack of training of self-discipline. When that burden fell in my heart in a way that I said, “Okay, I have to do more than what I’m doing,” I walked away from corporate America and went to the school and offered my services. Quitman County, geographically seated, it’s the lowest seat of county in Mississippi. It used to be the poorest county in Mississippi. The first four months was pro bono. When I say pro bono, I literally was in the schools six, seven hours a day. And on a day-to-day basis, I may sow into fifteen, twenty kids, five dollars here, twenty dollars a year. His faith is when you know greater is ahead of you, but you’ve got to pass through the graveyard in front of. And I’m happy to report, if you can keep moving through the graveyard, you’ll sooner or later make it to your greater. That was a person that invested into me that I’m forever in debt to, the personal sacrifice that they made into me being able to get that brand of “Greater Expectations” off the ground running into the school system. Mr. Jab Didn’t. That’s where Marks Youth Outreach came from. So, Jab Didn’t, one day, he was at Bumpers in Marks, Mississippi, and Coach Lynn Riley, he’s a living legend. He had some young men out and they were washing cars, and Jab offered them to wash his vehicle. In true fashion, his heart was spoken through his actions, communications that he and I had, and shared intimate conversations about the community, about a culture, about government, politics, all those things. The mentorship work of it was manifested through feed people willing to sow into the work itself. And long story made short, years later, that opportunity for them to wash cars has birthed a mentorship movement. Now we have The Hub, which is the center location in Marks, Mississippi, where we are trying to get an outreach aspect of people passing by, so when people coming in and out of the community they can see the hubbed action at that particular building. We have sports programs that are happening. We have reading programs that are happening. Also, we have a partnership with The Village, which is a mentorship work out of Jackson, Mississippi, The Reclaimed Project. They are working with the young babies who are pre-K up to about third and fourth grade, and then we are the pass-off from them for the fifth up through the eighth grade and ninth grade to see if we can keep a consistent hand up on them. So, Quitman County, it’s a small-knit community. With the mentorship work of Marks Youth Outreach from its onset, it was supported well because it was something new as far as people seeing it. And when I say support, it talk about people offer the children, but they didn’t offer the support, meaning to say, “Okay, here’s my child, do something with them.” So one kid may come from a two-parent home, another kid may come from foster home, another kid may come from a single-parent home. So trying to weigh those different dynamics and to make sure that we are hitting the nail on the head with the right approach. It’s not rocket science, but idio science. It takes. It takes a scientific approach, just learning those different perimeters of how they’re raised at home, because we have to be honest. If I’m allowed to custom my parents out at home from the mind of a child, even though someone tells me that’s wrong; but if my parents or if my home environment supports that, then in that child’s mind, I can do what I want to do.

And you’ve been listening to Edgar Scullark, telling the story of his own childhood and how he was able to connect emotionally with traumatized youth in his area, and how he gave up corporate work and corporate America to just, well, show up. When we come back, more of Edgar Scullark’s story here on Our American Stories.

And we return to Our American Stories and to Edgar Scullark, sharing the story of Marks Youth Outreach, the nonprofit organization that helps at-risk youth not just stay out of trouble, but become successful. Let’s return to Edgar to share with us some of the various programs that make up his nonprofit organization and some of the children involved. The biggest platform of the Marks Youth Outreach is our sports program. That’s what Coach Riley and through partnership with other young men who’ve come in through his program. Coach Riley is a lifetime community member from the Quitman County community. He was a stellar athlete, and he’s given his blood, sweat, and tears, as well as his health. Some can said they gave. Coach Riley has given his all, I mean, literally. Some of the health complication that he’s dealing with now, it’s because there were times that he was sacrificing finances for medicine to buy Gatorade for the athletes. That was time that he was sacrificing what he had for himself to make sure that those young men had what they needed. He is the hooster board of sacrifice. So Coach Riley is a conduit of mentorship rollover. I mean, there are young men who he coached when they were little who have now gone on, and they’ve now become parents. So in their spare time, they come back and they help Coach Riley; they give their time and effort and energy with the young men as well. So that’s about eighty percent of the program itself. The other twenty percent is where we’re trying to engage through just teaching the life skills. We’re trying to bring in a conventional kitchen so we can teach culinary arts. We’re trying to also build a service department where you’re able to teach a technical skill of checking the battery, checking oil, changing a tire, just checking a belt, see the wearing, terrible it. That’s a skill set that if you teach them that, that’s a moment of inspiration that becomes valuable because to fix something gives you power. We’re putting in a computer lab so we can teach coding. We have times where we sit down and just have heart-to-heart, talk it out, see what’s going on. So what I’ve started doing whenever I’m dealing with young people, because if you have me seated here, most children, after ten minutes, they’ve checked out, they’re gone, they’re done. So we walk it out and talk it out. We literally just walk. If I’m doing a home visit, I never engage children with parents around or family around. And this is why: because whenever you’re talking to the child and you’re telling the child something that the parent told them, the parent turns into a cheerleader: “Y’all told him that! I told him that! I told him! See, that’s all I’m saying!” Well, now this child looks at you as an extension of the parent, and they already don’t like. So, let’s go to a mutual place, which is let’s just walk it out and talk it out. And normally, when I finished with a walking-out, talking-out session, I have a contract and say, “Okay, if you can commit to four weeks of not getting in trouble, I’ll see if your parents will allow me to take you to a Memphis Grizzlies game. I’ll see if your parents will allow me to come pick you from school early and take you to go get pizza.” So it incentivizes them to admit and then self-correct. So the Marks Youth Outreach is a multifaceted mentor a board where we don’t just try to teach our young people how to catch a football. We teach them how to catch vision by getting them to become comfortable with who you are, accept who you are. So those are the life lessons that we try to teach the young men about character, about self-control, and then self-ownership. We have a program where we’re teaching young men to become gentlemen, the Gents Program, and we’re teaching, we teach everything from learning how to shake someone’s hand, learning how to square your shoulders, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart when you’re talking with someone. We also have a program where we say if someone actual question, and if you start your response off with “Hey,” that’s ten push-ups. So we have things of that nature.

The first young man that we had to become a part of the Gents Program, Antonio. This young man was the biggest problem in school, in the community. So we were meeting as the pastors and the men’s group, and we were trying to just get the momentum off of the ground, discussing how we can engage our young men. Just what happened this particular night, Coach Riley, they had finished the practice, and he was going to get ready to take Antonio home, but he asked Antonio come. We were like, “Yeah, come on in, sit down.” So while he would seated there, I don’t know if Jab, or if someone else asked him, “Hey, what do you think that the biggest problem is right now in the community?” We were just asking him from just being a kid, you know what, what did he think that some issues were? And then Coach Riley made it known to us how he was a part of the problem within the schools. So we started to talking to him and letting him know, “All right, hey, hold on, no, no, you can listen, you can’t do this. We expect more out of you. You should expect more out of yourself.” Then we started speaking, and then I said, “Tell you what, if you can go two weeks without getting into trouble.” This was around playoff season time. “Then we’ll take it to a Memphis Grizzlies game.” He literally sat there, looked at the contract, and said, “No.” We said, “Hold on, listen, the only thing you’ve got to do is just make sure you manage yourself correctly. Don’t get in trouble, don’t get into trouble. Don’t be disrespectful to the teachers. All you have to do.” “No,” he was just that honest. He said, “No, I can’t do that.” “No,” most youth would have been excited, like, “Yeah!” He was, “No, that’s okay.” I’m going to say this: I thought death would have gotten him before he made his change. This young man was very disrespectful. He looked at everything in a negative way. He was very combative; everybody in school was against him. In his mindset, he was not trying in school. But then when we get the homework, come to find out his father was killed, and just some more things that really shape who he had become. But now that same young man is a stellar student. The same young man is a respectful young man. The same young man, you see him, “How you’re doing?” At first we could see him just doing that, avoiding, just trying to hide. But now he lives. He does not have to hide. He can just be who is.

Antonio was the first of the Gents Program that we can say, again with consistency: if Coach Riley would have kicked him out of his program, and there were times that Coach Riley suspended him from the program a couple of times for a couple of days, but he never took his hands off. He made sure that there was a consistent hand of love on him. And now Antonio is a stellar student, as an awesome young man. Now, and you’re listening to Edgar Scullark tell the story of Marks Youth Outreach, and within it, stories about some of the young men whose lives have been transformed by the program. And my goodness, that Gents Program sounds like something every school in America should have, teaching young men had to become gentlemen, how to just properly shake a hand, make eye contact, how to speak to women properly, how to address adults. It’s so fundamental and so needed. And boy, we learned about Antonio. We’d love to get his story one day, the biggest problem in this school. But it turns out he had traumas of his own, real traumas of his own. The story of Marks Youth Outreach from right near where we broadcast, in Oxford, Mississippi. They’re in the Mississippi Delta. The story of Marks Youth Outreach continues here on Our American Stories.

And we’re back with Our American Stories and with Edgar Scullark. Let’s continue with Edgar and more of his stories. A love young man, Thishell Kip, was in the third grade. I taught him, and this is not about me, but I taught him how to shake hand. Just shake someone’s hand, and you would have thought someone had given him a million dollars. It was just the light that comes on. To me, the greatest reward in this mentorship work, it is seeing those lights come on, those moments. That’s those lights come on. My prayer is, even in the school system, all of us can have tests in his room, that our most impressionable moments are when a teacher is able to come off script and be able to have that one-on-one and steal student struggling with a formula or a word or a meaning, a definition, and to leave the other eighteen, nineteen just for about two or three minutes and give that personal time and attention to that one student. That light moment kicks on for a while. Now, school becomes exciting. That’s a young man that he had been molested, and noticed that whenever he would come all the ways, would standing office, from group activities. Whenever a lot of young men would gather, see him just just shouting away, went. And I had to go pick him up one day, and his grandparents – it’s a matter of like adoptive grandparents – because his father’s dead, his mother is in prison. And when I did the home visit, unscheduled, I was just stopping by to pick them up; and when the grandparents came out, they remembered me from the church community, and that’s when they shared with me what had happened to him. And I started just really just dropping small nuggets of encouragement, small nuggets of encouragement. A lot of people respond to touch from how they’ve been touched. If you touch someone in the public on their shoulder, b