My daily mission is to empower people and the community. It led me to a scholarship at the University of Virginia and all the way to the Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles.įollowing a career in the NFL, I came back to Richmond to have a positive impact on my hometown.
I went from attending Carver Elementary in Richmond to eventually playing football for Henrico High School. Even though my family roots are in that house in Gilpin Court, my father and mother worked hard to get us in a better position.
I am one of the lives who were more fortunate. This decision changed lives for the worse for generations to come. Another solution, another answer was there but not heard. I can only imagine what that did to my Pops - an entire community lost because we had no voice, no representation, no equity in making the decision in our own community. He still remembers the destruction of homes and businesses in what was then a sprawling Jackson Ward, killing a generation of wealth from what we know was the Black Wall Street of the South. as they watched the bulldozers come through to build the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike. He spoke about sitting on my grandmother’s lap on the porch of their home at 1164 St. Growing up, I remember my father telling me about when he was a little boy living in Jackson Ward.
