Mark Jennings grew up in one of the toughest parts of Washington DC. He lived in a basement apartment with his mother, and the mean streets just beyond the door were his playground. As an African American child, he felt that those streets were probably going to define his future – and maybe dictate his epitaph. Not many kids from his neighborhood escaped them.

As an African American child growing up in the Bay Area, Obai Rambo was politically aware – and politically involved – at a very young age. Issues of social and environmental equity particularly engaged him, and when he matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley, it came as no surprise to anyone who knew him that he chose political science as his major.

Dameion Gumbs was a student at Gardena Senior High School when he first met Darius Anderson. “It was 1995,” recalls Gumbs, “and Darius was a guest teacher in government relations. I later learned that teaching was something he had always wanted to do, and he was really enthusiastic about the subject. He held an essay contest on race relations – the prize for first place was some gift cards – and I won.”