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Here's Denisha. All growing up, I remember being a little kid and seeing vibrates and hearing stories of how the community was excited and people were engaged and they knew one another. The east side of Jacksonville, where I grew up, it's called the Urban Chorus. It's right along the St. John's where the Jacksonville Jaguars play. So very close to where they are right now. And it's so very close to where city life is.
The baseball stadium is maybe like a couple blocks from there. And I remember we would go to the football games. We would go to the baseball games, not that we could afford it, but like community members would pass out stuff.
There would be cookouts. People knew each other by name. It was a place where community members really thrived.
My godmother, she would tell me stories like, oh, yeah, Uncle Cox, he used to have a barbershop right here. Yeah, this place right here, which looking at the buildings, you would never think that it was a business of any sort because it was just an abandoned building. But there was this culture. And all of a sudden that stuff stopped. The top story tonight, that deadly shooting on the east side. Area nightclubs and bars are where law enforcement is finding a younger generation of people in possession of a new drug called NN dimethopentilone hydrochloride. People stopped having those cookouts. Drug and alcohol abuse started to increase and more people, instead of going to work, were just walking around the neighborhood aimlessly looking for where they can, I guess, get their next hit.
Gang violence increased. And my family was, I'm assuming a part of that. I would walk around the neighborhood and people would know me. You know, they would say, oh, that's such and such a little daughter. You don't mess with the Merriweathers.
They're going to get you. I wore my last name, Merriweather, as a badge of honor because everybody knew who I was. Everybody knew my family.
And I didn't think it was, you know, I thought it was great. But unfortunately it also followed me other places. It followed me into like the afterschool program. It followed me into school.
People knew the Merriweathers and not in a good way. How I grew up, you don't ask adults questions. You just say, OK, you know, like you don't ask them questions. If things are happening, you just, you know, you just go along with what's happening. So I never really asked too many questions about what was happening around me.
I just observed a lot of things and put my head down, say yes, ma'am. So my biological dad, I didn't ask a lot of questions about him, but supposedly the dad that I grew up with was not my biological father. I heard stories about how she just went to prom with this nice young man. He was so nice. And now here you are. And I was just like always intrigued about the story because I'd never heard much about him. But supposedly at one moment, his name was Ernest. And then at another moment, his name was Dennis.
So my biological dad up until even today, I'm still very cloudy and blurry, I'm not sure. But I do remember this one scene of a guy showing up at our house, it was the hotel, showing up at the hotel and he brought me a necklace. And I was like, thanks, you know, went back to playing. And my mom said, oh, that was your biological dad, but you better not tell your stepdad that he showed up. And I was like, yes, ma'am, because you do not ask questions about what is going on. So I lived all growing up with my stepdad, who I thought up until that moment was my biological father.
Yeah, we all moved from hotel room to this room. On the weekends, I would go with my godmother who was actually friends. Her daughters were friends with my mom at 16 in high school, they were all friends.
Story gets very confusing. Most times when I tell people this story, they're like, wait, what, how did you meet your godmother? Well, my mom had me at 16. She obviously had friends. And she still wanted to party so she could go and kind of reclaim her childhood. And so she left me with one of her friends, mom. And so that's how I became in the realm of this miraculous woman who I call my godmother had was not christened. And she was not like, this was a very informal relationship.
Like, here's a baby, can you take care of this baby? And it wasn't until I was about round one, my godmother told my biological mom, listen, just leave her here. Go out and have your life. Go out and do what you want. But coming in at three in the morning to pick her up, this in and out is not going to work. So just leave her here. Come back when you're ready to get her.
And we'll go from there. And she did. And she didn't show back up until like maybe a few years later, wanted to take me back. They went to court, they had joint custody of me. So I was going back and forth between my godmother's house and my biological mother's house. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I remember crying all the time because I did not want to go back to my mom's house.
Every Sunday, I just would ball. By the time I would get home to my mom's house, she would beat me and tell me, just stop crying, just be quiet. You're not going to go back. And it had gotten kind of bad that I would skip weekends of not going to see my godmother because the previous weekend had just been so bad and I would not want to come back to live with my biological mom.
So she would say, you're going to skip the next weekend as punishment for not wanting to come back. At my godmother's house, I was pretty much the only child. Her kids were grown.
Her kids were off in the military and college. And I had everything. I was spoiled.
It was fantastic. Went to church, had stability. Just she had a set of goals. She held me to her standard. She had a parenting skill. She was a mother. So I was moving, moving, moving, back and forth, back and forth. And at 13, I was, by that time, I'd failed the third grade twice.
So it was pretty bad. My favorite aunt, she, what I didn't know, was pretty much the orchestrator of getting me into my godmother's home and helping out with the courts. She was a security guard at the courtroom. She knew everyone there. And so she was pretty much the behind the scenes advocate for me.
And I didn't know that. When I was 13, she told me, you know, you don't have to stay with her. You can leave. And I looked at her. I'm like, she's my mother.
Like, what am I gonna do? I can't just not stay with her. She said, you can.
You can. And something happened. I can't even remember to this day what. But I looked at my biological mother, like, right in the eye. She made me so upset one day. And I told her, I am not coming back. I am not coming back here.
I do not care. I do not want to stay with you anymore. And she cursed me out. And she told me to leave. Like, don't come back.
Okay, leave. And it was the best thing that could have ever happened. I felt so liberated. This was at 13. Like, I can't imagine any 13-year-old looking back. I'm like, it was 13. But I wanted better.
Like, I wanted more. I saw on the weekends just two days sometimes out of a week how other people lived. And I was jealous.
Absolutely jealous. And you've been listening to Denisha Allen tell her story. She grows up in a tough part of Jacksonville. Biological dad out of the picture. Biological mom out of the picture for a long time. Comes back into her life after leaving her daughter with a quote, godmother who actually became the mother.
Well, the mother that Denisha deserved. When we come back, more of Denisha Allen's story here on Our American Stories. Okay, round two. Name something that's not boring.
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Denisha now turns to her education. Let's return to her story. I was a, well, I wouldn't say terrible, but I would not want me as a student. My first education memory, I think I was in about the second grade and I had to use the restroom and I asked my teacher, like, can I go to the restroom? And she said, no. And I was like, excuse me? Like, so I'm sitting there, I'm like raising my hand.
I'm like, okay, maybe this is the type of teacher she's like lame. And she wants you to raise your hand. I remember like thinking these as a second grade, like, okay, I'm gonna raise my hand so I can go to the restroom. So I'm raising my hand, wiggling in my seat, trying to get this lady's attention. And she did not answer my hand. And I yelled again, I have to go to the restroom.
And she said, no, when I ask you to do something, you don't do it, but now you want me to do something for you. And so no, you're not going to the restroom. And I walked out, I walked out of the classroom. I was like, peace.
I think I stayed in the restroom for like maybe 10, 15 minutes, came back strutting, like, can't tell me what I'm not gonna do. Stupid teacher. And I sat down, she told me, get out. And I was like, no, she's like, get out and go to the principal.
I was like, no. And she picked me up and started to like, try to pull me out of the class. I remember like grabbing onto the table, grabbing onto the wall, like crying, screaming, kicking her, trying to stay in class.
And she won. She like took me in principal's office. I spent most of my time in the principal's office. But yeah, that's my earliest memory of school. We didn't really go to school.
If my mom was tired, she didn't take us to the bus stop and we would just sleep in like, cool. If it was raining outside, we didn't go to school. If it was too hot, we didn't go to school. So we weren't really in school a lot. I remember my mom, she went to jail a couple of times because we weren't going to school. I remember that because then all of a sudden it was like, get y'all, you know, bleep the bleeps out of here and just go, just walk to school.
I don't care. I wasn't really in school. And when I was in school, I hated being there. We changed so much that there was never any significant reason for me to for me to make friends like my teachers. And the teachers didn't like, didn't like us at all.
They heard Merriweather was coming through the door and they were just like, sit down, you know, at least that's how it seemed. So the standard was very low for me to do well. And I didn't do well.
I was very behind. I remember that. I remember getting picked on. I remember trying to read and having kids laugh at me.
And I remember a lot of laughing at me. So by the third grade, there's the test, third grade test that you have to take in order to pass to the next grade in Florida. And I failed the test. And so that meant I had to either do summer school or repeat the third grade to do summer school. All that was required was for my guardian, my mother to sign a piece of paper. I would still be able to take the bus.
I would still be able to eat school lunch, just literally school during summertime. She didn't sign papers, just didn't sign. So I failed third grade. That next year, I failed again from the same thing.
Just didn't get a piece of paper signed. Couldn't read. Was low in math. And fourth grade, I was accepted into what was called the STAR program. And it's some acronym for something, but basically students getting into the right grade program. And I was in the classroom with people who were three and four grades behind.
And this is in fourth grade. We were the special population. We were the special kids in the school. And so in the fourth grade, I was like, I have to do this.
I have to do well. And there was this talent show. It was a talent show. I wanted to participate. I remember I wanted to sing this song by Yolanda Adams. I practiced so much.
I was also very bad. So my teacher would threaten me. Danisha, if you do not do well, if you do not be good, you're going to get kicked out of the talent show. I will write myself notes. Danisha, do not talk in class. Danisha, do not talk. Be good.
Just pages and pages and pages. I failed, obviously. When the time came, right before I was going to go on, he told me, no, you thought you were going to participate in the talent show? No, you were terrible.
Absolutely not. I was distraught. And from that moment, I just remember this click going off in my head of just anger, frustration at every single last teacher. No one seemed to really want to help me. Everyone just seemed to just criticize me all the time.
From early on when I would just walk in the classroom and sigh, nobody was really actually trying to help. It was just because of your actions, there's consequences. We're not going to try to figure out why you're acting like this.
Just no. I think that was the moment in my mind when I was like these crappy teachers, these people don't care. They don't really care about me.
So I don't care either. By the end of that year in fourth grade, I didn't pass the program. I wasn't able to go to my right grade.
Again, I was just so frustrated. And that was when I was like, you know, this is just some place I have to be so that my mom doesn't go to jail. My mom dropped out of high school.
I have many, many family members who dropped out of school and I was beginning to see why. And the summer before my sixth grade year, that was during the same time when I told my mom that I did not want to stay with her anymore. Things at home had just gotten so terrible and I could live with my godmother. And my godmother was, she's just my heart. She wanted to find a good place for me all the way around.
That year was probably the best time of my life. She wanted me to go to the church's school. By that time, the church, my childhood church, the church that we'd been attending, I'd come with her on the weekends. They built a school and she wanted me to go to that school. Of course, she didn't have no way to pay for that school.
We got a scholarship. And the summer before I started, I had to take a test to see what level I was on. I was very low, needless to say. And one of my teachers, she agreed to meet with me. I was not just low in reading. I was low in math.
I didn't know my times tables. She met with me one-on-one. I would go to her house during the summer. I would stay after school when she was setting up for the school year.
It was very different. And you're listening to Denisha Allen, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children. And you're beginning to understand why she works at a place with that name. Education was so important in her life when it became important. But for much of her early life, it wasn't. She was left behind, left behind. Failure of filling out paperwork by a mom. What just wretched circumstances for a kid to find herself. And then that godmother, that godmother who saved her.
When we come back, more of Denisha Allen's story here on Our American Stories. This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. It's a special thing to be a member of Navy Federal because they are a member-owned, not-for-profit credit union that invests in its members with amazing rates and low fees. That's why members could earn and save more every year. Plus, they serve all branches of the armed forces, veterans, and their families. So if you're interested in becoming a member, learn more at NavyFederal.org.
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netsuite.com slash stereo. And we return to our American stories and the final portion of Danisha Allen's story. When we last left off, Danisha was telling us about her early education in the public schools of Jackson, Florida. Things simply put were not good until people started to pour into her. Let's get back to the story here. Again, is Danisha Allen. I thought it was just going to be a bunch of fun and games to be honest. But we really, she really, I don't know what the saying is crack the whip.
I don't know. But we'd studied. And I learned my timetables.
I was reading, she did not let up. She was a student at Jacksonville University. And I remember going with her to her classes too. That was my life during the summer. Although I was still kind of nervous about the start of the year, at this new school, I was kind of used to going to a new school though I knew the parade how things were going to play out. The teachers were going to act like they were so happy to be there. And they would smile, greet us, the classrooms would be so beautiful with the freshest decorations, but it would wear off. That was just how it went.
Sure enough, on my first day of school, the teachers were there greeting us with big smiles, hugging everybody, the classrooms were beautiful. And I was like, yeah, I know this song very well. And the song is going to end.
The song never ended. Literally every day until I graduated, teachers were doing the same thing. I was always very shocked.
Even till I graduated, it was still a bit unsettling that it never stopped. I was in a class with students, of course, who were all younger than me, and I had my guard up because I knew what was going to come. Teachers were calling me to read. They would laugh at me, and I would have to claim my space and let people know that I am nothing to mess with.
Do not mess with me. I remember my teacher calling on me to read, and I was still stumbling. Nobody laughed. I looked around and was waiting, waiting to cut someone with my eyes and get ready for the playground. I was trying to figure out who the big dog in the class was so that I could bring them down.
Nobody laughed at me. Even a couple students, they would voluntarily try to help me. My sixth grade teacher, though, she invested as much or probably more in me as well. Students, typically how school goes, if people forgot, a teacher will open up the book and say, who wants to read chapter one?
The students will then raise their hand, and the teacher will pick from the students who raised their hand to read the paragraph in the book. I never rose my hand. She would always call on me. So every time we had to read, she would call on me.
I would stumble, stumble, stumble, stumble until one day I did it. And this was literally like the first nine weeks. It seemed like my life took a 180 turn. The name of the school is Expiry to Core Center for Learning. When learning is a joy, excellence is the norm and superiority is our goal. That's the school's motto. We literally had to recite it all the time.
We had a spirit of excellence. We also had demerits, which I was like, what are these, you know, where I come from, anything that's different from normal, we say, what is this white people stuff, you know? The culture was different.
I wasn't used to the culture. They held you to a standard. Every kid in my class, it was a very small school. I think I had about seven or eight kids in my sixth grade class. All of them were on honor roll. I was like literally the only dumb kid. And I was like, I cannot be the only dumb kid. Whereas where I was at, everybody was failing. The teachers expected for everyone to be, if you got to see, you were like, you need to be more like him. You know, it was just, it was so different. And so these kids, they were all very smart. They were all very nice and kind.
And I was like this, you know, pit bull dog who just came off the street and they, they didn't look at me like I was weird, but they, I think they knew in their mind, like we came here like that too, you know, like you will change, you know, kind of this weird environment. But this one time I was an ISSP in school suspension. The guy who was over it this time, he was also part of the church. He was a fireman and I think he was in the reserves or something, but this was this big black guy. He was in the military and a firefighter.
I didn't understand how he did them both, but that's what he told us all. And I just knew he was big and tall, just towered over, over me. He was in charge of giving me my work and just checking in on me that time in school suspension. He came to me and he said, Danisha, when is this going to stop? When are you going to change this?
When, when are you going to stop acting like this? Do you want to be in jail? Do you want to go to jail?
I forget how he phrased it, but it was something along those lines. Do you want to go to jail? Do you want to be in jail? And I started crying.
I was like nothing before nothing before it had got to me. You know, I don't care. You can drag me out of the classroom. You can send me home, call me stupid, fail me, fail me again, take away something that's so important to me. My life is crap. You know, I didn't see the meaning at 13. My life was just very meaningless and I was just taking part in whatever it threw because I had to. I had no control. And in that statement, even like now, I'm like, huh, because I realized that I guess I, I didn't have to go to jail.
That was the norm. And he was asking me, do you want to, do you want to be in jail because of how you're acting? And I think that was like the first time that I realized that my actions, like my actions like can determine my outcome not because of everybody else. And he was basically telling me that how I decided to act all these many, many years, I would end up being in jail. And I was like, no, that's not what I, I'm very like childish. I don't want to go to jail. No, I don't want to go to jail.
Like, no. And that's when I decided to lay off the crap and to take ownership of my, of my behavior to do better. And I tried really hard. I tried to do better. I would listen to my teachers.
I would get help. And by the first nine weeks, my grades had risen. I went from making B's and F's consistently, maybe a C here and there, just like that. That year, my seventh grade year, when I was supposed to be going into the eighth grade, I did not go to the eighth grade class. I went into the ninth grade class. I was in the eighth grade class.
I skipped the eighth grade. And that ultimately led to me graduating from high school. I don't think I would have graduated from high school if I'd stuck with the district public school. I'd seen so many of my family members, friends who dropped out. I think I would have dropped out too. I would have had a baby and I would have probably been working at a McDonald's, fast food place.
That would have been my ultimate success story. Education literally saved my life. I became the first in my family to graduate from high school. I got a college degree. I went away to college and then I moved to D.C. to work at the U.S. Department of Education. I lived a fairy tale life compared to other members in my family.
And it would not have been possible if I didn't receive people who were really invested in my life and in my education. And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to Denisha Allen for sharing her story. She works at the American Federation for Children and Now We Know Why. Also a special thanks to the Philanthropy Roundtable, the folks there for turning us on to the story.
And the Philanthropy Roundtable is America's leading advocate to support the causes we all believe in. And my goodness, what a story. What does it tell you about the power of one adult to love a kid?
All of us can have that effect, folks. Mentor and help a kid who might not have a dad, who might not have a good influence in their life. The story of Denisha Allen here on Our American Stories. TCL Roku TV for you today at go.tcl.com slash TCL Roku TV.
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Whisper: medium.en / 2024-02-15 04:48:29 / 2024-02-15 05:02:06 / 14
