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The June 19, 2009 issue of the Los Angeles Times carried a remarkable article by Esmeralda Bermudez. For those who didn’t see that article, I will put an abbreviated version here and then share some of my reactions to it.
The article began: “Khadijah Williams stepped into chemistry class and instantly tuned out the commotion. She walked past students laughing, gossiping, napping and combing one another’s hair. Past a cell phone blaring rap songs. And past a substitute teacher sitting in a near-daze. Quietly, the 18-year-old settled into an empty table, flipped open her physics book and focused. Nothing mattered now except homework.”
“No wonder you’re going to Harvard,” a girl teased her. Khadijah is known as “Harvard girl,” the “smart girl” and the girl who landed at Jefferson High School only 18 months ago. What students don’t know is that she is also homeless.
Ms. Bermudez wrote: “As long as she can remember, Khadijah has floated from shelters to motels to armories along the West Coast with her mother. She has attended 12 schools in 12 years; lived out of garbage bags among pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers … On the streets, she learned how to hunt for their next meal, plot the next bus route and help choose a secure place to sleep – survival skills she applied with passion to her education.
Khadijah doesn’t know a lot about her mother’s background. She knows her mother was only 14 when Khadijah was born. She says of her mother: “She tried her best; she never smoked or drank, never did drugs, and she never put us in abusive situations. However, that was the best she could do.”
Khadijah was in third grade when she placed in the 99th percentile on a state exam. Her teachers marked the 9-year-old as gifted, a category that Khadijah, even at that early age, vowed to keep.
In the years that followed, Khadijah’s mother pulled her out of school eight more times. When shelters closed, money ran out or her mother didn’t feel safe, they packed what little they carried and boarded buses to find housing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Ventura, San Diego, San Bernardino and Orange County, staying for months, at most, in one place. She finished only half of fourth grade, half of fifth and skipped sixth. Seventh grade was split between Los Angeles and San Diego. Eighth grade consisted of two weeks in San Bernardino.
Ms. Bermudez wrote: “At every stop, Khadijah pushed to keep herself in each school’s gifted program. She read nutrition charts, newspapers and four to five books a month, anything to transport her mind away from the chaos and the sour smell. At school, she was the outsider. At the shelter, she was often bullied.
In 10th grade, Khadijah realized that if she wanted to succeed, she couldn’t do it alone. She began to reach out to organizations for help: the Upward Bound Program, Higher Edge L.A., Experience Berkeley and South Central Scholars. She also sought help from teachers, counselors and college alumni networks. They helped her enroll in summer community college classes, gave her access to computers and scholarship applications and taught her about networking.
When she enrolled in her junior year at Jefferson High School, she was determined to stay put, regardless of where her mother moved. Graduation was not far off and she needed strong college letters of recommendation from teachers who were familiar with her work. This soon meant commuting by bus from an Orange County armory. She awoke at 4 a.m. and returned at 11 p.m., and kept her grade-point average at just below a 4.0 while participating in the Academic Decathlon, the debate team and leading the school’s track and field team. “That’s when I was really stressed,” she said.
Khadijah expected to feel more connected after nearly two years at Jefferson, to make at least one good friend. Students flock to her for help with homework and tests. But when prom pictures arrive, they show her posing alone in a silky black and white dress. In her yearbook, hundreds of familiar faces look back, but the memories are missing. She said: “It’s a nice, glossy, shiny, colorful yearbook. But it feels like they’re all strangers. I’m nowhere in these pages.”
When her college applications were due last December, James and Patricia London of South Central Scholars invited Khadijah to their home in Rancho Palos Verdes to help her write her essays. When they went to return her to skid row, her mother and sister were gone. Khadijah accepted the Londons’ invitation to spend the rest of her school year with them.
Khadijah graduated in June with high honors, fourth in her class. She was accepted to more than 20 universities, including Brown, Columbia, Amherst and Williams. She chose a full scholarship to Harvard and aspires to become an education attorney.
In the last six months, she saw her mother only a few times. She tried to find her so the reporter could interview her. She found her at a South Central storage facility where they last stored their belongings, sitting on a garbage bag full of clothes.
“Khadijah’s here!” her sister Jeanine yelled. Her mother’s face lit up. Khadijah explained the details of her graduation and gave her mother a prom picture. She said she would leave for Harvard the next day. “Look at you,” her mother said. “You’re really going to Harvard, huh?” “Yeah,” she said, pausing. “I’m going to Harvard.”
On Sundays, when I look at the lines of people waiting to enter our Drop-In Center – waiting for a hot meal, for a chance to use the computers, for the opportunity to see the nurse or get some donated clothes or simply for a chair in which to sit for a while without being hassled – I have to wonder if there is a Khadijah among them.
On weeknights, when I leave a meeting at the church and chat with the folks sleeping outside against our building, I again ask myself if there may be a Khadijah among them or if there will be at some time in the future.
Khadijah is a remarkable young woman with incredible talent and the drive to do well in life. We can all stand in admiration of her and be inspired by her story. But we must remember – our society failed her and her family, just as it fails all those on the margins. Khadijah is off to Harvard, but her mother and sister are still on the streets. And Long Beach still doesn’t have even a shelter for the chronically homeless!
The article began: “Khadijah Williams stepped into chemistry class and instantly tuned out the commotion. She walked past students laughing, gossiping, napping and combing one another’s hair. Past a cell phone blaring rap songs. And past a substitute teacher sitting in a near-daze. Quietly, the 18-year-old settled into an empty table, flipped open her physics book and focused. Nothing mattered now except homework.”
“No wonder you’re going to Harvard,” a girl teased her. Khadijah is known as “Harvard girl,” the “smart girl” and the girl who landed at Jefferson High School only 18 months ago. What students don’t know is that she is also homeless.
Ms. Bermudez wrote: “As long as she can remember, Khadijah has floated from shelters to motels to armories along the West Coast with her mother. She has attended 12 schools in 12 years; lived out of garbage bags among pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers … On the streets, she learned how to hunt for their next meal, plot the next bus route and help choose a secure place to sleep – survival skills she applied with passion to her education.
Khadijah doesn’t know a lot about her mother’s background. She knows her mother was only 14 when Khadijah was born. She says of her mother: “She tried her best; she never smoked or drank, never did drugs, and she never put us in abusive situations. However, that was the best she could do.”
Khadijah was in third grade when she placed in the 99th percentile on a state exam. Her teachers marked the 9-year-old as gifted, a category that Khadijah, even at that early age, vowed to keep.
In the years that followed, Khadijah’s mother pulled her out of school eight more times. When shelters closed, money ran out or her mother didn’t feel safe, they packed what little they carried and boarded buses to find housing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Ventura, San Diego, San Bernardino and Orange County, staying for months, at most, in one place. She finished only half of fourth grade, half of fifth and skipped sixth. Seventh grade was split between Los Angeles and San Diego. Eighth grade consisted of two weeks in San Bernardino.
Ms. Bermudez wrote: “At every stop, Khadijah pushed to keep herself in each school’s gifted program. She read nutrition charts, newspapers and four to five books a month, anything to transport her mind away from the chaos and the sour smell. At school, she was the outsider. At the shelter, she was often bullied.
In 10th grade, Khadijah realized that if she wanted to succeed, she couldn’t do it alone. She began to reach out to organizations for help: the Upward Bound Program, Higher Edge L.A., Experience Berkeley and South Central Scholars. She also sought help from teachers, counselors and college alumni networks. They helped her enroll in summer community college classes, gave her access to computers and scholarship applications and taught her about networking.
When she enrolled in her junior year at Jefferson High School, she was determined to stay put, regardless of where her mother moved. Graduation was not far off and she needed strong college letters of recommendation from teachers who were familiar with her work. This soon meant commuting by bus from an Orange County armory. She awoke at 4 a.m. and returned at 11 p.m., and kept her grade-point average at just below a 4.0 while participating in the Academic Decathlon, the debate team and leading the school’s track and field team. “That’s when I was really stressed,” she said.
Khadijah expected to feel more connected after nearly two years at Jefferson, to make at least one good friend. Students flock to her for help with homework and tests. But when prom pictures arrive, they show her posing alone in a silky black and white dress. In her yearbook, hundreds of familiar faces look back, but the memories are missing. She said: “It’s a nice, glossy, shiny, colorful yearbook. But it feels like they’re all strangers. I’m nowhere in these pages.”
When her college applications were due last December, James and Patricia London of South Central Scholars invited Khadijah to their home in Rancho Palos Verdes to help her write her essays. When they went to return her to skid row, her mother and sister were gone. Khadijah accepted the Londons’ invitation to spend the rest of her school year with them.
Khadijah graduated in June with high honors, fourth in her class. She was accepted to more than 20 universities, including Brown, Columbia, Amherst and Williams. She chose a full scholarship to Harvard and aspires to become an education attorney.
In the last six months, she saw her mother only a few times. She tried to find her so the reporter could interview her. She found her at a South Central storage facility where they last stored their belongings, sitting on a garbage bag full of clothes.
“Khadijah’s here!” her sister Jeanine yelled. Her mother’s face lit up. Khadijah explained the details of her graduation and gave her mother a prom picture. She said she would leave for Harvard the next day. “Look at you,” her mother said. “You’re really going to Harvard, huh?” “Yeah,” she said, pausing. “I’m going to Harvard.”
On Sundays, when I look at the lines of people waiting to enter our Drop-In Center – waiting for a hot meal, for a chance to use the computers, for the opportunity to see the nurse or get some donated clothes or simply for a chair in which to sit for a while without being hassled – I have to wonder if there is a Khadijah among them.
On weeknights, when I leave a meeting at the church and chat with the folks sleeping outside against our building, I again ask myself if there may be a Khadijah among them or if there will be at some time in the future.
Khadijah is a remarkable young woman with incredible talent and the drive to do well in life. We can all stand in admiration of her and be inspired by her story. But we must remember – our society failed her and her family, just as it fails all those on the margins. Khadijah is off to Harvard, but her mother and sister are still on the streets. And Long Beach still doesn’t have even a shelter for the chronically homeless!
1 comments:
Thank you for your kind words on your blog for Khadijah and for those that have supported her. I thought you would like to know that Khadijah has enrolled in the freshman class at Harvard College and has a website to provide updates – http://www.khadijahwilliams.com. We welcome any contributions to help Khadijah in pursuing her education.
Last week, Khadijah was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey for an episode of her show entitled, “Don’t Stop Believing.” The show will air on Friday, October 2. Please watch for Oprah’s surprise for Khadijah!
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