The Pact

by Sampson Davis

  The school moved to 55 Clinton Place, its current location, in 1982. The predominantly black neighborhood around the school is mostly working-class, but there are pockets of high-crime areas that have caused problems for students over the years. The blocks around Hawthorne Avenue were the worst. If you weren’t ready to fight when you walked around there, you risked getting mugged. Students regularly got robbed of their sneakers, jackets, and bus cards on the way to school or home. I rode the bus to and from school every day, but I went in the opposite direction.

  By the end of the seventh grade, Sam and I had become pretty good friends and were hanging out regularly during lunch. We played basketball, sat outside under the trees and played cards, or just sat in the cafeteria, banged out a beat on the table, and rapped.

  I was also tight with Faith Evans, now a well-known pop singer, who had attended Spencer Elementary with me. She was mature for her age—too mature to have any interest in me beyond “little brother.” Even then she was beautiful, and she dated guys who were at least three years older. She often shared her boyfriend business with me and sought advice, but, given my limited experience with girls at the time, I could only offer a sympathetic ear.

  In the evenings after school, I spent hours playing video games with my neighborhood friend Shahid Jackson or football in the apartment-complex parking lot with some of the other guys on the block. Within three blocks of the apartment complex where I lived, there were at least fifteen guys around my age. We broke into cliques, with two different groups doing things I just wasn’t willing to do: they sold drugs, stole cars, beat up guys outside their circle, and caused all kinds of havoc in the neighborhood. The rest of us hung out together and avoided the troublemakers, though sometimes we all got together for football.

  I didn’t know it then, but Sam was having a more difficult time staying away from trouble. His friends tended to be older and more influential. With his engaging personality, Sam has always attracted lots of friends. His loyalty was tested on a regular basis, and in his neighborhood he had to fight to prove that he could walk the streets without being intimidated. Though he was always friendly, you got the feeling there was more going on inside his head than he let on. He held it all inside. I’m quieter, more reserved. I’m not shy, just a laid-back, take-me-as-I-am-or-leave-me kind of guy. In some ways, I think that this protected me. Maybe the troublemakers figured I didn’t have the heart to hang with them. I don’t know. I just know they didn’t bother me. They didn’t try to persuade me to join them, and they didn’t try to make my life miserable by picking on me.

  Sam and I participated in our first graduation ceremony together after completing the eighth grade. Rameck arrived the next year, but Sam and I didn’t become close friends with him until our junior year.

  University High had a strong math-and-science bent. It offered summer and weekend programs, underwritten by oil and chemical companies interested in producing more engineers, scientists, and mathematicians. We participated in some of those programs, but quite frankly, high school wasn’t as challenging as the seventh and eighth grades had been. We had a few dedicated teachers at the high school who pushed us to learn and forced us to do our work, but too many others just didn’t know how to reach us and didn’t seem to care. They expected and accepted mediocrity or less, and unfortunately, we usually gave no more.

  “I got mine. Now you got to get yours,” exasperated teachers often told us.

  I no longer felt challenged, and my academic performance began to slip. I made average grades, but I could have done better if I had worked harder. Sam, who had graduated Number Three in our eighth-grade class, also dropped to average performance. Rameck made all A’s and B’s in our freshman year, but his grades dropped, too, in later years. All three of us began to skip classes. It was a common practice among students at our school. We knew we could get away with it, and we did.

  Rameck was quiet and low-key during our freshman year. He was still learning his way around his new school. He remained close to his friends in Plainfield and spent time with them. During lunch and between classes, I saw him hanging out with guys who rode the bus with him from his uncle’s neighborhood. His two neighborhood buddies didn’t return for our sophomore year, and Rameck became friends with two other guys, Hasaan and Ahi, the son of acclaimed poet and human-rights activist Amiri Baraka.

  Rameck also had a wild side. He and friends from his old neighborhood were getting into fights with other boys, and he was always into some kind of mischief. But Rameck was very smart, especially in science and math. He would be cutting up in class one minute and then ace a test that practically everybody else had failed the next. Very few new students were able make it in the Advanced Placement courses at University High if they hadn’t attended junior high school there. Rameck was one of the few. He also had an activist spirit and a heart to help people. He was the first to protest an injustice, and he questioned everything. Our instructors never would have guessed that for most of high school Rameck wanted to be a teacher.

  Rameck became popular pretty quickly by acting in school plays. In the ninth grade, he won the starring role of Scrooge in a play based on the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. This was a huge upset, because he’d ousted an older guy who captured the lead role in the school play each year. Rameck was later cast as the father in Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun.

  As a sophomore, Rameck joined Hasaan and Ahi in forming a group called the United Students Organization (USO) at our school. Ahi shared many of his father’s views about self-preservation, self-reliance, and community organization. That appealed to Rameck, who had grown up around uncles who belonged to the Nation of Islam. Students from several Newark public schools belonged to USO, which began to meet at Essex County College to plan strategies for improving the schools. Sam and I attended meetings every now and then, but Rameck was one of the leaders. Eventually, the meetings moved to the basement of the Baraka home.

  The group attracted the most attention in our junior year when it organized a student walkout and overnight sit-in at the Board of Education to demand a multicultural curriculum and to protest state budget cuts in education financing. Despite a student population that was overwhelmingly black and Hispanic, public high schools in Newark did not offer classes that taught our history.

  On a cool morning in April 1990, hundreds of students walked out of class and spilled into the streets in front of and alongside the school. We boarded public buses headed to Military Park. Along the way, the buses grew more crowded as students from Shabazz, Central, and other high schools joined the protest. From Military Park, we marched to the Newark Board of Education headquarters. We locked arms and chanted. Cars honked as we completely blocked traffic. Police showed up and tried to stop us because we didn’t have a permit, but we kept marching. What were they going to do? Beat us, sic their dogs on us, and throw us in jail, as police down South had done to the civil-rights protesters of the 1960s?

  It was one of few times when students from rival high schools came together for a useful purpose. When we made it to the board office, police and security guards were standing in front of the door to block our entrance. Our leaders demanded to speak to the superintendent, but the crowd of students grew impatient and we began pushing our way inside. Police arrested Hasaan and Ahi. Students took over the lobby. We sat in rows on the floor. Executive School Superintendent Eugene Campbell eventually came out and addressed us. He also summoned Assemblyman Willie Brown and State Senator Wynona Lipman, who spoke to us. Hours passed. At lunchtime, Superintendent Campbell had sandwiches, milk, and juice handed out to us. By nightfall, many students, including Sam and I, had left. We had to go to our part-time jobs. But a few parents, supportive of our cause, brought blankets and pillows. School officials ordered a pizza dinner for the remaining students. Rameck was among the fifty or so students who spent the night at the board’s headquarters.

  In the weeks afterward, a committee of parents, students, and e
ducators met to develop a curriculum that included African-American studies and the history of other minority groups. The next year, University High offered a course in African-American and Hispanic history.

  As one of the leaders of the protest, Rameck realized that school administrators would probably be watching him closely, and he began to attend classes more regularly. But his mischievous side still surfaced from time to time. One of his practical jokes almost got him kicked out of University High for good.

  Rameck didn’t like his biology teacher, so he often skipped her class. When he skipped class one day, he decided to return to play a prank on her. He knocked on her door, and when she opened it, he was standing there with a can of Silly String. Without saying a word, he sprayed a web of the colorful, sticky stuff up, down, and across her face and dashed away. When she turned to face her class, the students burst out laughing. The teacher was humiliated and furious. The principal summoned Rameck to the office and suspended him indefinitely. The superintendent of the Newark public school system banned him from University High School. The teacher told authorities that she had had an allergic reaction to the spray, and she threatened to file criminal charges against Rameck. The incident was the talk of the school.

  During his appeal hearing before the superintendent, Rameck pleaded for another chance. He apologized to the teacher, who was sitting in the room. He said he didn’t mean to harm her and promised never to do anything like that again. He presented supportive letters from another teacher at the school and from Amiri Baraka. He also had an unexpected ally that day: the offended teacher.

  When Rameck finished his presentation, she addressed the superintendent softly.

  “Don’t kick him out of the school for that,” she said. “Let him come back.”

  Rameck never knew what changed her mind. But she didn’t file charges, and the superintendent lifted the suspension, allowing Rameck to return to school.

  Rameck could be a real hothead and prankster, but I liked him. I could see even then that he was a really good guy.

  Sam and Rameck became friends first. They were among the few students who owned cars in our junior and senior years, and owning a car in high school made you instantly popular. All the girls wanted to date you, and all the guys wanted to be your friend. That’s part of what initially drew them together. Rameck owned a Mitsubishi Cordia and Sam an Audi 5000, a cool car mentioned in many rap songs at the time. They often got together on Friday nights and weekends for parties and dates. Sam picked me up sometimes, and I got to know Rameck through him.

  I didn’t party as much as the two of them did back then, and I didn’t drink anything stronger than soda. They drank, but one of the things I really liked about them was that they never hassled me or tried to push me to drink. I could be myself with them.

  All three of us worked part-time. Sam and Rameck worked at McDonald’s. I stocked shelves at Murray’s Steaks in my freshman year, cooked pizza at Chuck E. Cheese my sophomore year, and sold chocolate-chip cookies at Mrs. Fields my senior year.

  Sam and I were really into baseball and played on the school’s baseball team all four years of high school. Sam played shortstop and pitcher and was co-captain of the team, while I played first base. Since Rameck was hanging out with us now, he wanted to try out for the team, too, but he had never played before. Sam and I agreed to teach him. One day after school, Sam drove us to a park so Rameck could practice batting against a pitching machine. We talked him through the game and showed him how to swing the bat. Rameck took his place in the batting cage. The machine pitched the ball. Rameck swung with all his might. He missed. A second ball shot out. He swung again and missed again. A third ball came. He missed that one, too. The balls kept coming, and Rameck kept missing. We urged him to hold the bat this way or that. Nothing helped. Sam and I doubled over in laughter as our friend swung futilely at those flying balls. Finally, Rameck quit.

  “I’m better at playing girls than baseball,” he said. “So, I’ll just stick with what I know.”

  Just before the baseball season in my senior year, I broke my leg. I had been playing basketball with some friends and made a wrong move, and my leg snapped. I still went to practice to watch, and Sam drove out of his way every day to drop me off at home for the entire time that I wore a cast.

  The more the three of us hung out, the more we realized how much we had in common. We had long conversations about our families and the crazy things we’d witnessed in our neighborhoods. We also talked about school, what grades we’d made on a certain test, which teachers we liked and disliked, and what we wanted to do with our lives. It was clear that, like me, Sam and Rameck wanted to make something of their lives, even though all three of us were still fuzzy about what careers we wanted to pursue. Though he gave his teachers a hard time, Rameck wanted to be a teacher. He wanted to reach boys like himself, who seemed tough and incorrigible on the outside but really just needed guidance. A counselor had suggested that Rameck consider engineering because he was so good in math and science. At first, the only college he was seriously considering was Howard University in Washington, D.C., where his other two buddies, Hasaan and Ahi, were planning to go.

  Sam talked about becoming a businessman, but he never mentioned going to college until our senior year. No one in his family had ever gone to college, and he didn’t really think it was an option for him. Over the years I had considered at least a dozen other professions. One minute it was nursing, the next some kind of lab technician. But then, unexpectedly, my old dream was revived.

  When our teacher told us that a recruiter from Seton Hall University was going to give a presentation in the library, she gave us a choice: either stay in class or go to the presentation.

  The three of us didn’t really feel like staying in class. Out in the halls, we concocted an alternative plan. We would walk down the hall as though we were headed to the library, then sneak over to the gym. We were old pros at it by then.

  A teacher must have sniffed out our little scheme, because somehow—and to this day I don’t remember exactly how—we ended up in the library. Sam, Rameck, and I sat at a back table. As the session opened, we were goofing off, only half-listening.

  First, the recruiter tried to sell us on the university’s basketball team, which happened to be playing well that year, 1990. I love basketball, but I didn’t intend to play in college and wasn’t really moved by her spiel. Then she began to talk about the lack of minorities in the health profession. She said Seton Hall was dedicated to training more minority students to enter medicine as doctors through a program that provided free tutoring, counseling, and other support.

  My ears tuned in.

  The Pre-Medical/Pre-Dental Plus Program was—and still is—one of several initiatives under the umbrella of the Educational Opportunity Program created at Seton Hall in 1968, when black communities in Newark and other cities across the nation were rioting for civil and human rights. The EOP was designed to make higher education possible for poor students who have the ability to succeed in college but are undereducated and would probably be eliminated during the normal college-admissions process.

  The EOP finances dozens of specialized programs that provide money for tuition and housing, counseling, tutoring, assessment testing, and more to hundreds of needy students. The state added the Pre-Medical/Pre-Dental Plus Program under the EOP in 1980 because so few minority students were becoming doctors.

  The program accepts students based on high-school academic records, teacher recommendations, and personal interviews. SAT scores are considered, but they matter less than in the normal admissions process.

  Until that moment, when I heard about the program from the recruiter, I had no real plan. I knew I was going to college. That was it. But this program seemed to lay out all the steps for me.

  I could hardly believe my ears. I thought to myself: Free college. Free tutoring. Help getting into dental school. This is it! This is the way to do what I’ve always wanted to do.


  I lingered a few minutes in the library to talk to Sam and Rameck. I could tell right away that I was more excited about the program than they were. They were my boys, and I thought it would be cool for us to go to college together.

  “What did you think of what the lady said?” I asked.

  “It was all right,” one of them responded.

  “Man, I think I want to do this,” I added. “Why don’t we go ahead and do this together?”

  Of the three of us, Rameck was always the most skeptical, so, as expected, he was reluctant to commit. He didn’t want to bother with all the paperwork, he said. Besides, he already had plans to go with two other friends to Howard University in Washington, D.C.

  Sam, always the analyst, wasn’t interested in spending eight years in school. It seemed like such a long time to him. He was so good with numbers that he always remembered telephone numbers without writing them down and could do long mathematical problems in his head, and he felt he had the head and personality for business. But he had no idea how to become a businessman, and he didn’t know anyone in the field who could help him develop those talents.

  I was the only one who had ever even thought of becoming a doctor before that day. The truth is, none of us had seen anything to make us believe it was really possible. Sometimes, though, you just have to step out there and believe in something you can’t quite see. And something deep down was telling me this was one of those times.