By Garry Blanson
Founder of The Colored Industrial and Agricultural School, which would later become known as “Grambling State University”
About four years ago, at a personal development conference, a man said, “We don’t have a crime problem in our communities. The problem we have in our communities is an identity problem!”
You see, what he meant by his statement was that crime is “the effect” of a “cause,” and in order to change the effect, we must first change the cause…which is easier said than done.
By the way, there’s no way to get around “cause and effect,” because cause and effect is “a natural law” that governs the earth as well as the entire universe.
So Garry, if crime is the effect, just what is the cause?
Well, while there are several contributing factors to crime, according to an online source, the “main cause linked directly” to crime is commonly known as “criminogenic thinking patterns”—systematic cognitive distortions, irrational beliefs, and “a lack of knowledge of self.”
For whatever reason, it seems that schools are more focused on getting students to learn and regurgitate information in order to pass a standardized test than they are in helping them learn about who they are inside.
As a matter of fact, some students are so confused about their identity that they are quick to take on the identity of the opposite sex as well as other identities “who they are not!” Also, they aren’t even allowed to discuss their “identity problems” at school, “a place that is supposed to be an institution of learning!”
Furthermore, I feel that until the “identity crisis” is formally addressed, there will continue to be an increase in the “crime rate” throughout the state of Louisiana.
With that said, on to this week’s Black Pioneer, Charles Phillip Adams.
Charles was born in Brusly, Louisiana. Later, he was able to raise enough money to attend Tuskegee Institute, where he was a student of Booker T. Washington.
As fate would have it, his attending Tuskegee and association with Booker T. Washington proved to be a great turning point in his career and life when the North Louisiana Farmers’ Relief Association reached out to Booker T. Washington for a recommendation as to who he thought could lead the founding of an industrial school similar to Tuskegee.
Of course, Booker T. Washington highly recommended Charles to the association as the person who could establish such a school.
Once Charles became president of the school, he had to sell some of his family’s private land so that a building and a dormitory could be built for the school.
Later, Charles and the school’s Board of Directors had a major disagreement about what direction the school should take, which led some people to stop supporting Charles and his vision for the school.
However, in the end, Charles was able to serve as president of the school for about 35 years.
Sadly, on June 27, 1961, after guiding the school he helped start from scratch to become a university of national fame, Charles Phillip Adams died at his home, “The Charles P. Adams House,” which was built in 1936.
Note: The Charles P. Adams House is a cottage just off the Grambling State University campus and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
