Out of school for six months, “doing nothing but getting into more trouble,” as she put it, Hawkins experienced an attitude change and recommitted herself to getting an education. She enrolled in the Woodland Job Corps Center in Laurel, where she earned a GED. But she didn’t stop there. She worked and saved and borrowed enough money to attend Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., where she majored in criminal justice.
And the best was yet to come. On Friday, 13 years after her expulsion from Ballou, Hawkins graduated with a degree from Howard Law School.
“I just had to keep believing in myself, stay focused and not give up on my goals,” said Hawkins, who is now 28.
Her transformation is a striking contrast to what can seem like a worsening plight of many youngsters, especially girls, who grow up in neighborhoods plagued by crime.
In recent weeks, two D.C. girls — ages 13 and 15 — have been charged with murder and carjacking. The older girl recently pleaded guilty. At a marketplace in Prince George’s County, where at least 100 preteens and teenagers were gathered after 10 p.m. on a Saturday, a 13-year-old boy was stabbed and wounded, another 13-year-old boy was shot and killed, and a 12-year-old boy was charged with murder. He was the eighth youth in the county to be charged with murder this year, compared with six juveniles charged with the crime last year.
“It saddens me because . . . some of my friends have been the victims of homicide,” Hawkins said. “A lot of us are living in poverty and come from homes that are not always supportive.”
She spent years in the District’s foster care system because of what she says was her unstable home life. She was eventually adopted, but she knows how easy it is for teens to take a wrong turn. “We band together for protection. We fight out of loyalty and friendship, right or wrong,” she said. “The result is just more trauma that goes unaddressed.”
Hawkins recalled that her recommitment to self-improvement was spurred, in part, by the memory of a week-long civil rights tour she took in the summer of 2008. The trip had been organized by D.C. anti-violence group Peaceoholics. Girls from feuding neighborhoods in Southeast were taken to historical sites throughout the South and got to meet civil rights activists.
Hawkins was especially impressed with Annie Lee Cooper, whom she met during a stop in Selma, Ala. Cooper told the girls about an episode that occurred in 1965, after she had spent hours waiting in line to register to vote. Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark had prodded her in the neck with a billy club and ordered her to vacate the premises.
Cooper responded by punching the sheriff in the face and knocking him to the ground.
“And that touched me because I’m a fighter,” Hawkins said. “I have a warrior spirit, too. Annie Cooper made me realize that I was fighting the wrong people. I was fighting people who looked like me, Black girls who came from the same community, who had gone through the same hardships. She made me understand that I should be using my mind, my energy to fight racism and dismantle systems of oppression that create underserved neighborhoods and school-to-prison pipelines.”
The transformation did not occur overnight. But the impact of the tour would eventually be felt.
Source: The Washington Post, May 11, 2021.
