From No House to Morehouse

By Anonymous

FROM a homeless shelter to a Morehouse College summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Donald Washington Jr. has already succeeded against the odds.

He began his academic journey as a teenager who lived alone in men’s shelters near Washington, D.C., as his mother lived in separate women’s shelters in another state. “My tenacity comes from her,” Washington says now. “She has an indomitable spirit.” He says before they became homeless, she was working “four jobs concurrently.” His mother has a physical disability and today is blind in one eye and rapidly losing sight in the other.

But her now 24-year-old son embodies the Morehouse motto: “And there was light.” He has already beaten the odds, navigating a complex shelter structure and challenging the low expectations for his future to win a full scholarship to Morehouse College. He has traveled extensively, studying in Ghana and touring the historical sites in Egypt He was one of five winners of the Compton Mentor Fellowship for graduating seniors, which allows him to spend this year running a project he conceived in Atlanta called “The Peacemakers: Redeem the Dream Youth Leadership Program.” He conducts Kingian nonviolence and conflict resolution training with youths and adults.

His future is bright. “I’m going to take one year to study for the LSAT, but by the fall of 2008, I expect to be in law school,” he says. Still setting lofty goals, he plans to pursue a dual degree at Harvard, with a law degree and a master’s in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government.

“Before, I was the lamp under the table,” he told one writer. “Now, I light up the whole room.”

Copyright Johnson Publishing Company Jan 2007

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