photo by steed media service

Johnny Furr Jr. believes it would be hollow posturing, if not a form of legacy desecration, to pay homage to one of the colossal figures in America history without replicating many of his principal positions. Furr therefore used the 40th anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a call to action to provide a comprehensive haven for the community’s youth from the powerfully negative forces that prey upon them with ruthless regularity.

“Like you, I am so very proud to be here in Memphis because this is the day that we recommit ourselves to fulfilling Dr. King’s dream,” the vice president for Anheuser-Busch, Inc. says at Memphis City Hall, a few miles from where King was assassinated in 1968. “The question is: ‘What are you going to do to live out Dr. King’s dreams?’ I’m going to give you one solution: We have to reclaim our young people.”

To help accomplish this, Furr announced that St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch will be the inaugural title sponsors for the National Cares Mentoring Movement (NCMM), which was founded by Essence magazine’s editor emeritus, Susan L. Taylor. Anheuser is providing a $250,000 endowment to help NCMM recruit one million adults to join and become mentors to at least one young male or female. It would be the largest mentoring program in the history of the republic, and it would undoubtedly reduce the dismal rates of high-school graduation, crime, incarceration, teenage pregnancy, illiteracy and other community ills besieging young African Americans.

“You don’t have to have a Ph.D from Harvard. You just need to have a Ph.D from the streets of Memphis, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, St. Louis or Miami and to share that wisdom with a young person,” he says. “So if you really want to do something today, if you really want to honor Dr. King, then join the National Cares Movement.” -terry shropshire

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