How can we inspire and motivate our youth?

By Fr. Jerome LeDoux
Contributing Columnist

Appearing to be like any other millennial, the 11-year-old sophomore at McKinley Senior High School in Scotlandville, Louisiana went about surfing her TV for things of interest. Suddenly, while viewing a movie, she was galvanized by the sight of a spectacular release of white doves. So struck was she that she decided then and there that she could and would try to run such a business of her own.

Told of his daughter’s decision, Pharoah researched it online and decided it was feasible. They built a roost in the front yard equipped with doors that allowed pigeons to enter but not exit. When they bought 26 pigeons, she began to train them after school, placing the birds in cages on the roof of the house in order that they could look around and identify their home. Taught to use the doors to the roosting area, the birds were taken out and released from progressively greater distances. So, Glory Birds was born. Popular at weddings and funerals, the doves can find their way home from 90 miles or more by remembering rivers, roads and objects. Since they take good care of them, the birds are always eager to get home, often arriving at their loft before their owners can drive home with LaQuella’s mother as chauffeur. “Sadly, we lose some in the winter from hawks that come here from the cold North.”

LaQuella Johnson demonstrated on the spot that she was not your everyday millennial (Generation Y) who, according to demographers and researchers, are the largest living U.S. generation, born plugged into technology and gifted with the most educated mothers of any generation before them. Partially true of the Black family, it is ¾ mile off the nearly 70 percent of children who are having children.

LaQuella was not about to make that mistake. At the conclusion of the burial of Media “Maydell” Mary Mallet on April 8, 2017, I had the pleasure of meeting LaQuella when she did a white dove release to the sound of prerecorded sacred Music. “I started this ‘Glory Birds’ business when I was 11 years old. Now after six years, I am passing the business down to my younger sister, because I am about to enter college at Southeastern University in Hammond, Louisiana.”

Unfortunately, the majority of our youth, especially minorities, do not have the powerful linchpin/springboard of her father, Pharoah, and her mother, Yolanda, who had prepared their minds for such things by instilling in their children a love for animals. At and near their home they have fish, rabbits, quail and guinea pigs. Their parents had also taught them to be self-reliant, making jelly and preserves from fruit that they grew, and pickles from cucumbers they had likewise planted.

“I don’t let them get too far from what the reality of life is,” Pharoah noted. “They’re not playing video games. It’s the real world.”

Somehow, the facile tropes about Millennials and other generational groups don’t fit the tough realities of inner-city neighborhoods like Scotlandville, Louisiana, a section of Baton Rouge so rough that, together with neighborhoods Banks and Field, it is known as “3rd World.” It was in this milieu that LaQuella made her way to success in business so that her enterprise became a neighborhood pride and joy.

Notwithstanding the meager 30 percent of Black nuclear families intact with both mama and papa present, there is still the extended family whose strengths and relevance communities and cities fail to tap into at their own peril. Why we are not availing ourselves of the many assets of our extended families remains a mystery. In our not too distant past, there was a time when not a single homeless child was in the streets, because extended families scooped up all the homeless children, cared for them, nourished and protected them. We needed no charitable institutions. Alas, families/extended families have shrunk inversely to feckless government growth.

As surely as peer pressure can be a great asset or liability, so can peer counseling be an effective tool in the hands of someone like LaQuella Johnson. Not every child can be as much of a self-starter as she was. But, once alerted to such an array of possibilities, all youngsters can see that it is within their power to dream, to venture and to achieve. In a way no parent, guardian or other adult can hope to articulate it, LaQuella is whispering in their ears, “Yes, you can do it.”

Admitting that her neighborhood is bad, LaQuella exults at how amazed the kids and other people stopping at the corner are when she releases the pigeons that flock together in eye-popping beauty. She lights up when thrilled kids come up and ask, “Why do you have this?” She invites them to do better. Despite their rough community, she assures them that they can dream and realize their dreams.

This article originally published in the June 12, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.