Tuskegee-educated Engineer Gives Tours, Forums; Mentor Inspires Blacks to Attend College
by Marilyn Lewis
San Jose Mercury News Staff Writer
Friday, December 30, 1994

hy don't they do something?" Carl Ray asked his wife as they drove home after an evening spent with friends. Once again, their conversation had hit what was troubling them all. "Why are we losing so many young African-American males?" they asked each other.

And, as he turned the problem over in his mind that night in 1988, Ray asked himself another, more basic question: "Who are 'they?' "

By the next morning, Carl Ray says, he knew at least this: "I'm going to be 'they.' "

His solution: to inspire kids to graduate from college. College in general, that is, and predominantly black colleges in particular.

Ray himself had graduated in electrical engineering in 1967 from Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The school was founded in 1881 by black leader and educator Booker T. Washington and is the alma mater of generations of black thinkers and leaders, among them George Washington Carver.

At Tuskegee, the academic expectations were high, and "older people took an interest in you," Ray recalled. "They pretty much said, 'You are going to stay here.' I did quit, but they got me back. I just kind of fell in love with it." But, he asked himself, how could children today be expected to attend college if they couldn't picture themselves there?

So, about six weeks after the dinner party, Ray escorted four boys -- all family friends -- on a low-cost tour of Southern colleges. Back home, Ray helped them fill out forms and called throughout the school year, asking questions of them and their parents: How were their grades? Had they completed the applications? Did they have the money they needed?

Today, two of those youngsters are in college; a third graduated; and the fourth enrolled for two years, then dropped out.

As for Ray, his tour grows larger each year. In 1989, he was astounded when he was swamped with queries. His wife, Brenda, director of special education for Alum Rock School District, encouraged him.

The second campus tour included 45 high school students. Today, it includes dozens of students and more parent volunteers than he can use for the trip to Spelman College, Morehouse College, Morris Brown College and Clark Atlanta University -- all in Atlanta -- and Tuskegee.

By now, Ray says, 500 or 600 students have gone on the tour. And about 120 of them have decided to attend black schools.

Like a friendly, slightly worried uncle, Ray keeps tabs on about 215 young people, 35 of whom have graduated by now.

''He always calls me and says, 'How was your summer? How did you do in school?' said Terri Vance, a 21-year-old graduate of Silver Creek High School who now attends Lincoln University, a predominantly black college in Pennsylvania. There, Vance says, "the atmosphere is just warm" and the stigma of being in the minority is "no excuse" for not achieving her best.

After the first tour, Ray began organizing informational forums for students and parents, such as one held Thursday at Ola's Restaurant in Cupertino. There, panels of returning college students told high schoolers and their parents about their experiences with classes, roommates, social life, studies, racial issues and the transition from high school to college.

It was a far cry from 1989, when Ray -- now a professional stand-up comic -- financed the second trip himself. He wanted to make it happen, but no one had the money then, he said. "I charged 45 airline tickets -- $9,000 -- on my American Express card," he said.

In the end, he paid about a third of the bill himself. Other Tuskegee alumni, friends and neighbors pitched in for the rest.

Today, most families pay a nominal fee. Those who cannot, get scholarships. ''When you do something like that," Ray learned from the experience, "most of the time you find people will come out and help."

Ray said he wants to encourage youngsters to attend any college or university they want. But he is evangelistic about the merits of historically black colleges. So are many of the families with whom he has worked.

Take Sharon Jackson's children, Henry James Jackson, 20, who attends Clark Atlanta University, and his sister Jamie Jackson, 21, who is about to graduate from rival Tuskegee.

In a black college such as Clark Atlanta, James said, he doesn't feel pressure to be anybody else's concept of "black," as he says many black youngsters do in a largely white environment. No longer an exception, as he was when he attended Oak Grove High School, he feels relief at just being himself, he said.

James and Jamie both attended Ray's tour and came back enthusiastic, said Sharon Jackson, who works as a secretary at San Jose State University.

And Virginia Groce-Roberts believes that her son, Kareef, 19, would never have become a student at Morris Brown, another black college, without Ray. "I really hate to think. In his senior year, he had begun to get into trouble. I was panicked."

It was the experience of such a group of students, on their way home from Ray's college forum in 1991, that culminated in the historic $34.8 million legal settlement this year involving race discrimination at Denny's restaurants across the country.

After the college forum that year, 18 youngsters stopped off at a South San Jose Denny's to eat and chat. The manager there demanded a $2 cover charge and advance payment for their meals, conditions not required of whites. The students challenged the policy and documented their complaint, and the two class-action lawsuits stemming from this incident ultimately were joined by 4,300 people. The cases were settled out of court in May, and each of the 18 students received $25,000.