Description

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For many young black American males, the future seems bleak at worst, uncertain at best. The challenges seem frightfully beyond the reach of society’s current institutions. Realizing the state of emergency firsthand, educator Sadiq Ali successfully established an African-American all-male school in Hartford, Connecticut. In Benjamin E. Mays Institute: Educating Young Black Males, Ali describes the creation and life of the school, its successes and struggles. Perhaps most importantly, Ali uses his knowledge and experience to address ways that others around the nation can use education to improve the future for today’s young black men.

About the Author

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Although officially retired from Hartford, (Connecticut) Public Schools, Sadiq Ali is currently a language arts and male rites-of-passage instructor at Tawheed Prep School in Richmond, Virginia. As of September 2015, he serves on the school’s board of trustees and chairs its curriculum and instruction committee. He also serves on the Greater Opportunity II board of directors, established to resurrect Connecticut’s all-boys summer school initiative. In addition to serving as an educational consultant, Ali leads discussions and workshops on academic achievement and education, including a workshop on supporting disabled African-American males in the public schools. He holds a bachelor of science in education from the University of Hartford and a master in science in education from Central Connecticut State University. In 1996, Ali was inducted into the college’s Alumni Athletic Hall of Fame for high achievement in basketball.

Praise For…

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“Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays, best known as the inspiring mentor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., emphasized the interrelationship between education, personal integrity and the struggle for social justice. It is hard to imagine an academic institute so adeptly embodying the essential teachings of Dr. Mays as the institute bearing his name envisioned and founded by Mr. Sadiq Ali in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1995. Over the years I have come to learn that it was not only the institute that embodied these essential teachings. The founder of the institute also embodies these teachings, personally and professionally. A major role of education in the Benjamin E. Mays Institute was to inspire social responsibility and social engagement for the student, the student’s family, and the institute faculty. Making education a transformative process for the individual and the surrounding society makes one deserving of the title ‘Mwalimu’—honored teacher—in Swahili. At this time of excess mortality and mass incarceration of young people in Black and Brown communities, I join many others in celebrating the completion of this urgently needed book on the Benjamin E. Mays Institute by my brother, colleague and honored teacher, Mwalimu Sadiq Ali.”
~ Randolph G. Potts, Ph.D., licensed clinical psychologist, fellow and diplomate in African Centered/Black Psychology; recipient of the 2014 Bobby E. Wright Award by the Association of Black Psychologists; author of “Dehumanization, paranoia and deadly police violence in Black communities,” Psych Discourse (Winter 2014); “Rites of passage in prison settings: Interrupting rituals of mass incarceration.” Black Child Journal (Summer 2013); and other works.