Black dropout rate stirs anxiety
By Gayle Worland
Tribune staff reporter

November 17, 2003

With the wisdom he has collected over his 17 years, Zaceri Anderson knows that parents are the steppingstones to a child's education.

But in Anderson's case, with his mother ill and his father living out of state, it's his uncle who is helping him get through his junior year of high school.

"I'm just lucky that God sent him to me," Anderson said of Louis Benson, 63, an inventory inspector who is determined to see his nephew through South Shore Career Academy and on to college. "Without him, I would've given up."

Anderson is determined to escape a dismal statistic about his generation: In 2001-02 more than a fourth of African-American male students dropped out of Chicago's public high schools, according to an analysis of state data released last week.

The troubling numbers are what brought Anderson and his uncle--one in a sweat shirt and jeans, the other in a neat suit--together with 100 others Saturday in a South Side church to discuss how parents, schools and entire communities are failing their sons.

"For the magnitude of the problem that is facing the black community, there's almost no response to this from the black community," said Phillip Jackson, 53, executive director of the Black Star Project and the meeting's organizer. "We have a strong reason to be emotional about this because our children are being destroyed."