Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Community Urged To Take Action At Banquet

It was a night of accolades and honors at the 10th Annual Ila Upchurch Awards Banquet Saturday, Sept. 24.

The theme was "Challenges of the Millennium," with all attention focused on the future.

Awards were presented to the outstanding student, citizen of the year and educator of the year, while two Prescott High School students were given $500 scholarships.

Kerri Bryant, a PHS senior, was tabbed as the outstanding student for the event.

Citizen of the Year went to Yvonne Mullin Thomas, with Dorothy Smith being named Educator of the Year.

Scholarships were presented to Lincola Nixon and Nathaniel Lucena.

Coach Fitzgerald Hill, wide receiver coach and recruiter for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks, was the keynote speaker.

He urged those present to remember the struggles of the past as the millennium approaches.

He said it was unusual to get so many people together for such an event on a Saturday night. Normally people are busy with other plans.

Hill praised the Boys II Men and Girls II Women groups for their work during the banquet. The members of these groups served the guests and cleared the tables later on.

As a recruiter Hill's goals are to help bring a national championship to Arkansas. But on his trips across the nation, he sees many problems facing today's young people.

While praising those students who earned scholarships, Hill said things don't have to be like they were in Colorado recently, where 15 students were killed by fellow students.

Hill spent eight months in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm and realized how blessed people are to live in the United States.

He compared the problems in the black community to a plague of cancer, saying everyone knows what happens if cancer is left untreated.

"There's a lot of treatments, but there is no cure," he said. "In communities we have a different kind of cancer."

In the recent past, Hill said, service to the community was expected of everyone and done without thought. Children were nurtured to do the right thing and children could go places without fear.

Parents and teachers, he said, would fill the children with pride, and when the community saw a need, it tried to provide it.

But those days are gone, Hill continued. Children can't go from place to place by themselves without being afraid of what might happen.

Where once people took care of one another, this has been abandoned.

Parents, he said, are told not to punish their children, but there was a time not so long ago when children were punished for doing wrong when the incident occurred, and again by their parents when they got home.

"Things have changed," Hill said, "and we need to get back to the old ways.

"We've accomplished a lot," he continued, talking about the black community. "When Martin Luther King went to Washington, D.C., he went there for a purpose to unlock doors.

"But we've come to the point where the struggle doesn't have the intensity it had. We've become complacent."

The only constant in the world, he said, is change. Nothing stays the same and the stock in the African American community has gone down.

In the 1960's, Hill said, the black community struggled together for a common goal. Now, he continued, to cure the cancer of the future, people must serve each other and not work solely for material things.

"We don't need to foster false illusions. Service is the rent we pay for being here and we've gotten away from it to do what's convenient."

Hill said organizations such as the Ila Upchurch Foundation give young people a stick-to- it attitude, something they need and don't get everywhere they go.

He suggested adults becoming mentors and spending time with young people, helping to teach them the value of hard work and service to their fellow man.

"As African Americans," Hill said, "we have more money than ever before and are doing better in many ways. But we're doing worse in others."

In the 1950's, he said, there was no problem with black-on-black crime. Today, one in three black males is in the penal system.

"We used to not have to fear each other," he said, "but now we do."

There are 30 million black people in the U.S., Hill said, making up 12 percent of the total population. When one of this group does something, it affects the rest of the population as well.

"We're about to lose two generations of young black students and adults," he told the audience, "to drugs and violence. The cancer is spreading.

"There's no cure, but there is treatment. We need immediate chemotherapy in our communities."

Hill said $125 million a year is wasted on sending young people to boot camps. In the past, young troublemakers were given the choice between jail and the army, but now, he added, the army doesn't want them.

There are 600,000 black people in prison in the nation, he said, and this constitutes a serious voting block. This number, he said, could swing an election were they not in prison.

"It's Mayday time in our community," Hill said. "This is the greatest crisis since slavery. The enemy is not just racism anymore.

"With the resources we have we can get the attention we need. We need to take control and make decisions on where we want to go.

"We have spoiled our children and aren't giving them what they really need. We need to realize our potential and the effect we can have on society."

Hill said the black community has become relaxed and needs to take charge as it did in the 1960's, but not with violence.

Violence, he said, doesn't effect change, but civil disobedience, such as Dr. King used, does.