100 Black Men: Helping Black Boys Grow

What's up, MJ, man? Tell us a little bit about yourself, man.

Uh, my name is Montel Johnson. I'm a senior. I go to Park Tudor. It's in the central part of Indianapolis. Uh, I play basketball, I run track, I participate in a whole bunch of programs, everything. So I always got something on my schedule in a month or something like that. So, okay.

So MJ, man, you know, you're doing a lot, man, as far as activity-wise or whatever. Uh, your father was telling me that you're into this, uh, group called 100 Black Men of Indianapolis, man. Tell us about that a little bit.

Uh, the 100, um, Black Men Indianapolis, it's basically a program where they, um, you participate in for like 6 to 7 months, and by the end of it, however much money you make, it'll help you in scholarship money for college and everything like that. And they also, they also teach and help you grow to a young Black man And you also be surrounded with other Black kids your age. So it's basically a brotherhood. You learned a lot. You learned a lot about yourself and about the people around you. And they, they help you a lot in life, which as far as I've been in, it helped me a lot.

So you say it helped you. So you said it helped you a lot, man. You know, just give us an example of some of the things that you've learned and some of the things that they taught you so far, man, while you've been in this program.

One of the main things I learned is I learned how to open up and speak about things that I've been struggling with. You know, most of the times I would just stay quiet and keep the problems in, but they really forced me to open up and it helped me a lot as I write about different things. They ask us to write about different topics and stuff like that. And I just learned a lot about myself and I learned how to maneuver around those problems and work through it with my brothers by my side and my sergeants and everything.

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