Ernest Kent Coulter launched Big Brothers mentoring organization in New York in 1904. Big Brothers merged with Big Sisters International in 1977 to become Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.
BBBS, which matches mentors with mentees ages 6–18, has 471 chapters and operates in all 50 states in the U.S. and 12 countries around the world. The organization is noted on Forbes magazine’s gold-star list as one of the top 10 donor-worthy charities in America.
In an effort to encourage more minority men to become mentors, the officials of the BBBS formed a partnership in June 2009 with three of the nation’s largest black fraternities — Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi and Omega Psi Phi. The coalition held a roundtable summit in Atlanta in December. Congressman John R. Lewis, D-Ga., was one of the keynote speakers.
During his address, Lewis disclosed how he grew up poor on his family’s farm, and how badly he wanted to attend Troy State, now known as Troy University, but the school would not respond to his entreaties.
Lewis’ family did not own a television, “but we followed the drama of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the people of Montgomery 50 miles away,” said the civil rights icon. Those events would encourage Lewis to write to Dr. King asking for his help to get into Troy University, but instead “Dr. King became a big brother to me … he sent me a round-trip Greyhound bus ticket and invited me to come to Montgomery, Ala.”
Lewis went on to say that Dr. King’s involvement in his life as a “big brother,” forever changed him and helped him develop into the man he is today. –condia perry
