Print
While his friends were hanging out and getting into trouble, Justin Bowens grew up spending many hours alone shooting basketballs. “That’s when I did my dreaming,” Bowens said. “I would shoot and think to myself how I was going to be different.”
Bowens’ childhood was what some would call high risk.
Now 29, he does not remember ever meeting his father. Because his mother was battling drug addiction, Bowens and his siblings (two brothers and a sister) were separated and taken in by relatives.
He was raised in Frederick, Md., by his grandparents. Although they properly cared for Bowens, the neighborhood was dangerous with drugs and gangs prevalent.
Print
It was the late 1960s, and Robert Lee Brown, then a teenager, was working the night shift at a grocery store when a White female customer dropped her shopping list. Brown, an African-American, bent down and picked it up. The customer falsely accused Brown of brushing up against her.
A few days later, Brown’s boss began regularly driving him home after work rather than allowing him to walk. He eventually told Brown the reason: Ku Klux Klan members had threatened to harm him over the incident.
Brown was born and raised in the segregated south in Bartow, Fla.