WBEZ reports: In Austin, Black mentors are making college possible, including Dr. Brown, a Malcolm X College professor

Black men in the West Side community face some of the biggest hurdles to getting a degree. Just 1 out of 4 who make it to college graduate in six years.

Tyrek Gates had hit his lowest point.

As an 18-year-old student at Alabama A&M University he was too focused on making money, he says. He didn't want to burden his mom back home in Chicago, who had his younger siblings to raise, by asking for help paying for food and other daily expenses.

Instead he worked security at every campus athletic event and step show. But eventually that got in the way of class and studying and Gates' GPA dropped below 2.0. After working so hard to get to college, he flunked out his sophomore year.

Gates packed up his belongings and boarded a Greyhound bus for the 10-hour-plus ride back to the Austin neighborhood on Chicago's West Side. He moved in with his family and worked fast food and security gigs. But he never stopped thinking about re-enrolling in school.

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"My mom and my dad don't have a college degree and I wanted to be a great example for my siblings and my future children," the now 25-year-old said. "[I can't] push down their throat, 'Go to school, go to school, go to school, get your degree,' and I don't have mine."

But Gates worried he couldn't afford to take out more student loans; he was already in debt from his first attempt at college.

That's when his mentor and pastor Charles Brown stepped in. Gates' family joined Brown's storefront church in Austin about 15 years ago, when Gates was a kid. Since then, he says, Brown has become a father figure to him.

"He always saw greatness in me, even when I didn't always see it in myself," Gates said.

Across the country, Black men are the least likely student group to finish college. A lot stands in their way.

Gaining 'mentor status'

Brown, now 56, barely made it himself.

He grew up in Austin, one of the most populous and racially segregated neighborhoods in the city. It's been subject to disinvestment for decades, and families there earn almost half as much as they do across the city.

Brown was the first in his family to attend college. He juggled his studies at Wright College on Chicago's Northwest Side with full-time work and raising his young son. It's a common struggle: Nationally, Black students are twice as likely as their classmates to balance school with caregiving or work.

"I wasn't focusing on class, so I was failing. I know because it took me 10 years to get a two-year degree. It really did," Brown said. "Toward the end, one of the advisors told me, 'You'll never graduate from college.' He said, 'You're not college material,' literally. And I was broken.'"

The advisor suggested he would be better off getting a factory job to support his family.

"Something changed from that moment on," Brown said. "I didn't want him to be right, so I made sure that I buckled down."

Brown said he made the dean's list and finished his associate degree before continuing on to his bachelor's degree. But he kept hearing that voice in the back of his head saying: "I'm not good enough, I can't make it" - until he encountered his first professor who was a Black man.

Farid Muhammad, a dean at East-West University in the South Loop, grew up in an earlier generation but alongside the same persistent belief that Black men are not "college material."

As a college sophomore in the 1960s, Muhammad said, a professor called him into his office after he received an "A" on a research paper.

As a college student in the 1960s, Farid Muhammad fought to counter the persistent belief that Black men are not "college material." He has helped younger generations of Black men overcome challenges like those he faced.

"He had books piled up that I had referenced," said Muhammad, now 82. "And he just challenged me because he thought I wasn't smart enough from what he knew of me, or whatever racial or cultural thing he had going on within his brain. He thought that somehow I had somebody else do this paper."

Muhammad did not let that experience, or countless others like it, stop him. He worked his way up to his Ph.D. and into a position where he could help younger generations of Black men, like Brown, still struggling in a system that was not built for them.

Brown said he nearly dropped out his senior year because he did not have enough money for tuition. But Muhammad told him to stop making excuses and walked him through a scholarship application.

Brown said that compassion not only helped him to keep going - it showed him the true meaning of "mentorship."

"At graduation when you see them walking, you can almost see them blossom," Muhammad said. "You can just see the metamorphosis. It's powerful."

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

Lisa Kurian Philip covers higher education for WBEZ, in partnership with Open Campus. Follow her on Bluesky @lkpwrites.bsky.social.

Photo credit: Khan/Sun-Times

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