 Tyrone Hite, a recent graduate from Cooper High School and a participant in A-GRAD’s May graduation ceremony, is saving money to enroll next semester at Minneapolis Community and Technical College.
He’s also building a new track record after making some poor choices. Tyrone attended four different high schools in five years, including a stint in the County Home School after being convicted at age sixteen of aiding and abetting a robbery.
“It was me not speaking up to the person I was with, and not trying to prevent the whole situation,” he says.
Asked to reflect on his experience so far with Hennepin County and probation officer Mark Joseph, Tyrone says, “The nine o’clock curfew is the hardest part. But probation has helped me. It’s a lot of tough love. Super-tough love. It gave me more structure.” He smiles wryly. “Those P.O.s—they pop up.”
At the beginning of his twelfth grade year at Cooper High School, Tyrone was a year and a half behind in his course work. The turning point was participating in a Black Colleges and Universities Civil Rights Research Tour. Visiting Dr. King’s house, the Lorraine Hotel, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham’s Civil Rights Museum, civil rights marchers and NAACP leadership humbled and motivated him.
“I learned more on that trip than I did in twelve years of school,” he says. “It inspired me to finish up school, keep moving forward and continue the fight that’s been passed on to my generation, especially for young black men.”
Moving forward includes building skills and adding to his resume at EMERGE, a community development agency that helps people facing significant obstacles redefine themselves and access jobs through mentoring, financial coaching, supportive housing, and other key services. Through EMERGE—referred to him by his group home director, Bobbie Evans—Tyrone works one-on-one with a work counselor and volunteers in the community.
“I love EMERGE,” says Tyrone. “It’s a place full of resources and people who care about bettering individuals and lifting up the North side. The work counselors are like a mom. They prep us for job searching, helping us with things like setting up email, Social Security number, birth certificate, I.D. They also help us with how we’re presenting ourselves, like leaving a good voicemail. They make sure we’re putting in our [volunteer] hours, too.” Tyrone likes volunteering with Mad Dads’ stop-the-violence activities.
Tyrone also connects with Change Equals Opportunity (CEO), a curriculum-based, group mentoring program that engages young African American men ages 12-25 in interactive activities that reinforce positive behavior; and has does youth work with B.U.I.L.D (Broader Urban Intervention Leadership Development), teaching gang/violence prevention, how to deal with bullying and peer pressure, and how to deal with emotions. And he’s completing a series of internships with local businesses and non-profits through EMERGE’s North 4 program.
“North 4 focuses on young black men who are vulnerable to crime,” says Tyrone. “We’re ‘at-hope,’ not ‘at-risk.’”
His favorite internship so far is the Northside Youth Collaborative, a library-based program for 8-14-year-olds that teaches violence prevention, gang prevention, how to speak up and how to identify positive role models. “I like working with kids.”
What about his own role models? “A lot of people have been behind me,” says Tyrone. “Even Mark!” The list is long: “Bobbie, my mom and dad, my basketball Coach Jamil, my uncle Ricky Williams, Jeff, my life coach at Young Life (a Christian-based youth group). And I just like the Cooper staff, period: the teachers, deans, and principal.”
Asked about his career plans, Tyrone sounds like a young man with a wide-open future. “I’m not sure,” he says. “I’m interested in a lot of stuff: engineering, child development, medicine. Maybe I’ll be a pediatrician or a teacher. I want to try African-American studies, and study different cultures, too.”
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