Black Professionals Stress Success

The attorney, the singer, the race-car driver and the cosmetologist describing their lives Friday to the fifth-grade class were playing a dual role. Along with demonstrating their skills, they were showing that African Americans can succeed in any field.

Their addresses to Kristin Hale’s class at Charles G. Emery Elementary School, part of a program to dramatize Black History Month, was organized by publicist Cynthia Busby, whose daughter Brittany is one of the 31 students in the class.

“There is a community of African Americans in Orange County, and we are doing positive things,” Busby said.

“I wanted the kids to see African Americans in a different light,” she said. “We’re usually portrayed as athletes or comedians, but there are black doctors and lawyers, and the children do have a choice of profession.”

On the panel were Felix Giles, the first black American to drive in off-road racing’s Baja 1,000, attorney Wilma Shanks, musician Marlon Ware and Busby, who is also a cosmetologist and demonstrated hair-cutting and braiding techniques.

All of them touched on a theme that transcends ethnicity: Success comes to those willing to sweat for it.

Shanks, who helped represent Damian Williams, a defendant in the 1992 riot-linked Reginald Denny beating case, said the foundation for her success was in elementary school. Even such simple exercises as spelling quizzes will haunt the students in years to come if they are disregarded today, she said.

“Believe it or not, other attorneys do judge you by your spelling skills,” she said. “There are things you have to do right now to prepare yourself and discipline yourself to be an attorney.”

Shanks guided the students, clearly awed at having a real lawyer in the room, through the structure of the judicial system, then had them repeat her mantra: “I shall succeed. I will someday lead. Being at the bottom is not good enough. Whatever it takes, I have the right stuff.”

Ware, a 25-year-old accounting student at Cal State Fullerton struggling to establish a music career on the side, said he is still on that search for success.

“The entertainment business is not easy,” he told the students. “All of it comes through a lot of sweat and a lot of hard work. There is no way you can go straight to the top.”

When he played some of his music, which ranges from rhythm and blues to hip-hop, even the teacher danced in place. Ware seemed stunned but very pleased when all the children in the room said they wanted tapes of his work.