Nurture the Children Now to Save Them Later

The Pastor’s Page

Last week, a man named Cornelius Dupree was released from prison, after having been there for 30 years for a crime he didn’t commit. He was convicted in 1979 for rape and murder, and maintained his innocence from the beginning.
Had it not been for the tireless work of the Innocence Project, and a feisty, brilliant Dallas District Attorney named Craig Watkins, Dupree might still be in prison – as are, I am afraid, way too many innocent people.
There is a huge reason for my being so passionate about us reaching and teaching the children in our community. A recent study reported that only 11 percent of African American males, by the time they reach 4th grade, are proficient in reading, compared to 38 percent of white males.
Neither group has anything to brag about, but I really believe that when a child begins to falter in school, his or her self esteem plummets and they become ripe for anti-social behavior. All any child wants to do is to excel and to be loved, and if he or she cannot excel in school, and/or feel love from his/her home, then that child will do what he or she must in order to have those basic needs met.
It seems to me that kids who are encouraged and helped and loved have a better chance of staying out of the system than those who find themselves looking for love and acceptance in all the wrong places.
It also seems to me that the more of our kids we can embrace and empower, the fewer of our kids will wind up in the system, guilty of a crime, or, worse, accused and convicted of a crime, but who are innocent.
I don’t know what Dupree’s youth was like. I do know that he was only 21 years old when he was accused and convicted of the rape and armed robbery.
From what I have come to understand, law enforcement personnel are very slow about admitting when they are wrong. District attorneys, judges and police officers, it seems, work to support each other and uphold convictions, even when compelling evidence is unearthed that suggests a mistake might have been made.
Mr. Dupree could have been released sooner had he “admitted” that he committed the crimes for which he was convicted, but he refused. It was DNA evidence that cleared him.
He is fortunate, but what I want is for us to educate and empower our kids, especially our young men, but our young women, so that they will be less and less likely to get caught by a system which has never shown African Americans any love …or justice.
I cannot imagine being in prison for 30 years, period, much less in prison all that time when I knew I was innocent. I cannot begin to imagine how much brilliance and talent is wasting away in prisons all over this country.
I know that it isn’t right, and I know that if we know the situation but do nothing to share what we have with kids who need us, we have forfeited an opportunity that our people need in order to bring hope to kids who are lost and who need to see sermons, not hear them.
Someone wrote on my Facebook page that she couldn’t believe cases like that of Mr. Dupree are still a reality. They are, and will continue to be until we take up the mantle and say “enough.” We can challenge the system, as Craig Watkins and the Innocence Project are doing, and we can take our children and nurture them when they are young, so that they become less and less likely to be the bait for a prison system which has an appetite for African American men which has never been satisfied.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith