An endangered species?

I had the pleasure of taking part in two events last week involving an endangered species: young black men.

The first, held at First Baptist Church on New Street, was the Morehouse College Glee Club. There, dressed in tuxedoes for the first half of the program, strode 30 young men from all over the country — two from Macon.

If you're not familiar with the glee club, a little history. The Morehouse College Glee Club is 105 years old and has performed all over the world. The members sing songs of hope and sadness from the sublime to the sacred, and they do it all with the utmost professionalism.

They performed at Super Bowl XXVIII in Atlanta, singing the National Anthem with Natalie Cole before 72,000 people and millions watching around the world. They sang for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. From March 3 through March 18, the glee club appeared in Memphis; St. Louis; Chicago; Edwardsville, Illinois; Buffalo, New York; Cambridge, Massachusetts; New Haven, Connecticut; New York; Newark, New Jersey; Philadelphia; Allentown, Pennsylvania; and Washington, D.C. You get the idea. Being a part of the Morehouse Glee Club is a big deal — and it's a lot of hard work.

You can go online (www.mcgclub.com) and listen to these great voices, but I would encourage you to see them in person. A different picture of the future of black men will emerge. And remember, this tradition has been going on for more than 100 years.

The second event is not of a musical nature, but it is possible that some of the young men in the "Leader In Me" program implemented this school year at Burdell-Hunt Magnet School and Sonny Carter Elementary School could sing in the glee club some day. There were more than 130 young men sitting in front of me as the principal of Northeast High School, Steven Jones, brought the occasion to order by asking them to repeat after him: "I'm a leader!" Jones thought the volume wasn't satisfactory, so he asked them to repeat it again. I think they may have been somewhat shy. Here they were sitting in the President's Dining Room on the campus of Mercer University. Most had never been on a college campus before. But, believe me, they soon upped the decibels.

I know some of our dear readers are wondering, "What about the young ladies?" The young ladies went to a similar program at Wesleyan College earlier in the school year.

Let me quickly explain the "Leader In Me" program. It's patterned after Stephen Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People." Everything is tied to those habits, and dividends already are apparent. Suspensions at both schools have been cut in half. Students are less disruptive and are taking on more responsibility for what they do in and out of class.

What the two college events did is surround the students with people who are not just there to tell them what a leader is, but to show them. It placed them around successful people who may have come from the same neighborhoods they are growing up in.

Certainly, all face different challenges, but it helps connect the dots, particularly one of those seven habits: "Begin with an end in mind." How do you know what you want to be when you grow up if you don't know what it looks like? How do you start building that inner personal character if you've never seen it? How do you know how to be ladylike when you've only been around hoochie mamas? How do you learn to be a man when all you've seen are sperm donors who have no idea how to support themselves or their children? How do you counter the misogynistic musical (if you can call it that) messages they can't avoid? We have to develop the inner leaders in them.

The next question that should be asked, dear reader, is simple. Why are only two schools using the program? Those two schools are sponsored by the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority, The Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club of Macon, The Easter Family Fund, Macon Occupational Medicine, Cox Communications, WGXA Fox 24/ABC 16 and the Peyton Anderson Foundation. It's time for the Bibb County Board of Education to evaluate the program and spread it in an orderly fashion to other schools.

It takes two things for this program to work: money and commitment from staff at the school and district levels. Can we find enough of both in Bibb County?

Charles E. Richardson is The Telegraph's editorial page editor. He can be reached at 478-744-4342 or via email at crichardson@macon.com. Tweet@crichard1020.

This story was originally published April 16, 2016 at 7:36 PM with the headline "An endangered species? ."