NAACP Saturday School educates youth and inspires community

New Crisis, The, Feb/Mar 1998 by Sloan, Lester

Phil Bridgett gets down on all fours to face his opposition. At 6'5" and 250 pounds, he appears to be up to the challenge, but you can never know. His six opponents are hyped-up and fidgety; their wide-eyed youthful enthusiasm has his stomach twisted in knots. This is not going to be your typical Saturday afternoon scrimmage.

He detects some lateral motion on his left, and a surge of adrenalin triggers his own response: "If each red piece is worth ten cents, how many do you need to make a dollar?" he asks. A chorus of young voices responds, not exactly in unison, and not all correct; but there are enough "tens" to make the big man smile. Bridgett takes a deep breath and accepts the task at hand. The Ventura County, California NAACP Saturday School is in session.

Bridgett is just one of the many parents who show up each weekend during the two sessions of Saturday School (October/December and February/April) to give support and lend a helping hand when necessary. Going into its eighth year, the school has about 60 enrollees per session, and offers classes K through 12. And the school is beginning to pay some real dividends: Four graduates of the school have gone on to college.

The Saturday School is a response to what some blacks in Simi Valley see as a loss of identity in the black community, especially among its young people. A more immediate concern was the sporadic incidents of racial intolerance in the West Valley communities, coming to a head with the trashing of the home of a black family in 1989.

The Bosses, a Simi Valley family of five, returned home after a visit to Los Angeles to find that their house had been vandalized, with racial slurs and "white power" slogans painted on the inside and outside walls of their home. The perpetrators were never apprehended, and for John Hatcher III, President of the Ventura County Branch of the NAACP, it was the last straw. This was one of many such attacks against blacks, in what he calls "the most racist community in America."

African Americans make up less than 2 percent of the estimated 105,0000 people living in Simi Valley. The attack on the Bosses' home helped mobilize black families in the area. Between CO and 100 p e o p 1 e turned out for an emergency meeting Hatcher called. "We set the room up for about twenty people," says the NAACP president, "but we had to go out and get more chairs to accommodate the overflowing crowd."

Among those gathered there were Lyle Jackson and Greta Vaught, two Simi Valley mothers who were alarmed at what they considered the community's lack of cohesion and their own daughters' lack of self-esteem. Responding to Hatcher's request for ways to tackle the problems, Jackson suggested a community picnic while Vaught recommended the formation of a Saturday School. "I had only one stipulation," says Hatcher, "no Federal funds!"

After getting the go-ahead, the two-women went to work, meeting at each other's homes three or four times a week and spending hours on the telephone. About a month later, an estimated 100 people showed up for the branch's annual picnic at Lemon Park in Simi Valley. Passing a hat, they raised $143.00, which became the seed money for the Saturday School. "I think people had a misconception that blacks moved out here to get away from each other," says Jackson. "When we started the Saturday School we saw that our story

was not uncommon; many of us had children who were having the same identity crisis."

Both the picnic and the efforts to make the school a reality involved the entire community. "As far as we were concerned," says Vaught, "that was an image that we wanted to project, and we were willing to work with anyone who was willing to work with us." Cassandra Sheard, a black guidance counselor at California Lutheran College, worked with Jackson and Vaught to get the use of the college's facilities for the program. Jorge Garcia, a Hispanic professor at Cal State Northridge and Dean of the then School of Humanities, recruited grad students to teach Afro-American studies, Math and English.

It took about six months to get all the things in place, but when classes 34 CRISIS FEBRUARY/MARCH 1998 were offered for the first time in October of 1990, everyone was welcomed. "It was a renewed sense of commitment," says co-founder Jackson. "When we started the Saturday School, we opened the doors to the entire Simi Valley and Conejo Valley community to everybody--- blacks and whites alike."

The Saturday School is really the brainchild of co-founder Greta Vaught, who teaches at Taft High School in Woodland Hills, California. "I feel that the Saturday School offers a means of pulling the community together, and it serves my purpose of trying to come up with some kind of assistance to young people who want to improve their basic skills. You not only pull from the educational community," she continues; "you pull from people who can serve as role models, who can come into the school and share their professional experiences with students."