A Hope in the Unseen

“Inspiring …. An absorbing and moving portrait of [a] young man’s passage from the turmoil of high school through his … first year at Brown University.”

—
People
magazine

“A tremendous empathetic leap … a story of sheer human grit that should be read by others as example and inspiration.”

—
Washington Post Book World

“A great read … worthy of Tom Wolfe …. A searing expose of racial injustice [that] couldn’t be less didactic …. A moving and meticulous narration of two years in the life of Cedric Jennings.”

—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
, front page review

“An extraordinary, formula-shattering book.”

—
New York Times Book Review

“What distinguishes it from the poverty-lit pack … is the emotional richness of Cedric’s struggle and the extraordinary depth of Suskind’s telling of it … exquisite.”

—
Chicago Tribune
, front page review

“A sweeping book, so powerful it can move a relatively jaded reviewer to tears. It is inspiring enough to justify hope.”

—
New York Newsday

“Absolutely gripping. A sort of suspense novel of the human psyche … it’s beyond good, it’s really extraordinary.”

—Walter Kirn,
National Public Radio

“An important, honest, and moving look at an extraordinary passage: a young black man’s rise from the ghetto to the Ivy League.”

—
Providence Journal

“A classic … simply the best thing I’ve ever read about the confusing thicket of questions surrounding the preferential treatment of disadvantaged blacks …. Before you utter another word about affirmative action—favorable or not—please subject yourself to the pleasurable and edifying experience of reading this superb book.”

—Washington Monthly

“An absorbing, painstakingly reported book … it should be required reading in college education and sociology courses.”

—Boston Globe

“Jennings’s story is one of triumph within both cultures, black and white …. It is a privilege and an inspiration for readers to accompany Cedric on part of his long, difficult journey to maturity.”

—
School Library Journal

“A true story that grew out of a series of articles Suskind wrote for the
Wall Street Journal
in 1994. The series won a Pulitzer Prize for feature reporting. It’s a gripping read, but the book is even better.”

—
San Diego Union-Tribune

“Every person in America should read this book.”

—
Whole Life Times

“[An] inspirational story … a remarkably intimate work …. Like the celebrated [Pulitzer Prize—winning] series that is its foundation,
Hope
is based on extensive interviews, astounding access, and acute reporting. The minutiae of Cedric’s personal history come alive in carefully observed scenes.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer

“A dramatic, heartrending story bound to enrapture reviewers, grab educated readers, and provoke much discussion …. The reader can’t help being moved by Suskind’s novelistic account of the tension between Cedric’s two worlds.”

—Biography
magazine

“The story is true, although it reads like a gripping novel.”

—Newsday

“An enormously hopeful book, a book that cries out to be heard.”

—Houston Chronicle

“Suskind uses his reporter’s skills brilliantly, portraying Cedric’s outer and inner life and making an eloquent though unstated plea for affirmative action. Essential reading that provides some small hope for our social ills.”

—Library Journal

“This book is both engrossing and illuminating. The narrative reads a lot like fiction. But it’s not.”

—
San Mateo County Times

  1.   
SOMETHING to PUSH AGAINST

  2.   
DON’T LET THEM HURT YOUR CHILDREN

  3.   
RISE and SHINE

  4.   
SKIN DEEP

  5.   
TO HIM WHO ENDURETH

  6.   
THE PRETENDER

  7.   
GOOD-BYE to YESTERDAY

  8.   
FIERCE INTIMACIES

  9.   
BILL PAYERS on PARADE

10.   
A BURSTING HEART

11.   
BACK HOME

12.   
LET the COLORS RUN

13.   
A PLACE UP AHEAD

14.   
MEETING the MAN

        
Epilogue

        
Author’s Note

        
Afterword to the Revised and Updated Edition

A
hip-hop tune bursts forth from the six-foot-high amplifiers, prompting the shoulder-snug slopes of black teenagers to sway and pivot in their bleacher seats. It takes only a second or two for some eight hundred students to lock onto the backbeat, and the gymnasium starts to thump with a jaunty enthusiasm.

Principal Richard Washington, an aggressive little gamecock of a man, struts across the free throw line to a stand-up microphone at the top of the key as the tune (just a check for the speaker system) cuts off. He dramatically clears his throat and sweeps his gaze across the students who happen to be present today—a chilly February morning in 1994—at Frank W. Ballou Senior High, the most troubled and violent school in the blighted southeast corner of Washington, D.C. Usually, he uses assemblies as a forum to admonish students for their stupidity or disrespect. Today, though, he smiles brightly.

“Ballou students,” he says after a moment, “let’s give a warm welcome to Mayor Marion Barry.”

The mayor steps forward from a too-small cafeteria chair in his dark suit, an intricately embroidered kufi covering his bald spot. He grabs the throat of the mike stand. “Yes,” he says, his voice full of pride, “I like what I see,” a comment that draws a roar of appreciation. The mayor’s criminal past—his much publicized conviction for cocaine possession and subsequent time served—binds him to this audience, where almost everyone can claim a friend, relative, or parent who is currently in “the system.”

The mayor delivers his standard speech about self-esteem, about “being all you believe you can be” and “please, everyone, stay in school.” As he speaks, Barry surveys an all-black world: a fully formed, parallel universe to white America. Providing today’s music are disc jockeys from WPGC, a hip-hop station from just across the D.C. line in Maryland’s black suburbs. A nationally famous black rhythm and blues singer—Tevin Campbell—up next, stands under a glass basketball backboard. Watercolors of George Washington Carver and Frederick Douglass glare from display cases. All the administrators are black, as are the ten members of the muscular security force and the two full-time, uniformed cops, one of whom momentarily leaves his hallway beat to duck in and hear the mayor.

Along the top rows of both sets of bleachers, leaning against the white-painted cinder blocks, are male “crews” from nearby housing projects and neighborhoods in expensive Fila or Hilfiger or Nautica garments and $100-plus shoes, mostly Nikes. Down a few rows from the crews on both sides of the gym is a ridge of wanna-bes, both boys and girls, who feel a rush of excitement sitting so close to their grander neighbors. All during the assembly, they crane their necks to glimpse the crews, to gauge proximity. Next in the hierarchy are the athletes. Local heroes at most high schools but paler characters at Ballou, they are clustered here and there, often identifiable by extreme height or girth. They are relatively few in number, since the school district’s mandatory 2.0 grade point average for athletic participation is too high a bar for many kids here to cross.

The silent majority at Ballou—spreading along the middle and lower seats of the bleachers—are duck-and-run adolescents: baggy-panted boys and delicately coifed girls in the best outfits they can manage on a shoestring budget. They mug and smile shyly, play cards in class, tend to avoid eye contact, and whisper gossip about all the most interesting stuff going on at school. Hot topics of late include a boy shot recently during lunch period, another hacked with an ax, the girl gang member wounded in a knife fight with a female rival, the weekly fires set in lockers and bathrooms, and that unidentified body dumped a few weeks ago behind the parking lot. Their daily lesson: distinctiveness can be dangerous, so it’s best to develop an aptitude for not being
noticed. This, more than any other, is the catechism taught at Ballou and countless other high schools like it across the country.

As with any dogma, however, there are bound to be heretics. At Ballou, their names are found on a bulletin board outside the principal’s office. The list is pinned up like the manifest from a plane crash, the names of survivors. It’s the honor roll, a mere 79 students—67 girls, 12 boys—out of 1,389 enrolled here who have managed a B average or better.

With the school’s dropout/transfer rate at nearly 50 percent, it’s understandable that kids at Ballou act as though they’re just passing through. Academics are a low priority, so few stop to read the names of the honor students as they jostle by the bulletin board. Such inattentiveness drives frustrated teachers to keep making the board’s heading bolder and more commanding. Giant, blocky blue letters now shout “WALL OF HONOR.”

The wall is a paltry play by administrators to boost the top students’ self-esteem—a tired mantra here and at urban schools everywhere. The more practical effect is that the kids listed here become possible targets of violence, which is why some students slated for the Wall of Honor speed off to the principal’s office to plead that their names not be listed, that they not be singled out. To replace their fear with confidence, Principal Washington has settled on a new tactic: bribery. Give straight-A students cash and maybe they’ll get respect, too. Any student with perfect grades in any of the year’s four marking periods receives a $100 check. For a year-long straight-A performance, that’s $400. Real money. The catch? Winners have to personally receive their checks at awards assemblies.

At the start, the assemblies were a success. The gymnasium was full, and honor students seemed happy to attend, flushed out by the cash. But after a few such gatherings, the jeering started. It was thunderous. “Nerd!” “Geek!” “Egghead!” And the harshest, “Whitey!” Crew members, sensing a hearts-and-minds struggle, stomped on the bleachers and howled. No longer simply names on the Wall of Honor, the “whiteys” now had faces. The honor students were hazed for months afterward. With each assembly, fewer show up.