By Karanja A. Ajanaku, kajanaku@tri-statedefender.com
Manassas High School sits in zip code 38107, where 32.6 percent of the families live in poverty.
That sobering statistic was woven into Dr. Rosie Phillips Bingham’s keynote address during the Manassas Alumni Association’s 24th Annual Unity Brunch at the Holiday Inn-University of Memphis on Saturday.
Bingham is a member of the Class of 1967, which took center stage at the brunch as Class President George White and as many others who could make it celebrated the senior year they shared 50 years ago. It was a fun weekend of reflection interwoven with thoughts of the future.
Bingham, vice president for Student Affairs at the University of Memphis, was among those alternately looking back, sizing up the present and envisioning what it would take to produce better times.
A four-person family with two adults and two children is poor – by the account of the U.S. Census – with annual cash income below $23,283, she said, adding that the median household income in zip code 38107 is $21,712.
“If that’s the median, you know there are a lot of people living there making less than that,” she said.
“So what’s it to us? Well if Gold and Blue is the emblem of Manassas we have to make some more golden floors for foundations and blue skies for opportunities. If we will never let Manassas fall, we must begin to increase the number of students getting high school degrees and college degrees.”
There clearly is work to be done. According to her stats, 26 percent of “our people” in the neighborhood who are over 25 don’t have high school degrees.
“If we can’t do anything about the neighborhood, then maybe we can make the insides of Manassas become the neighborhood,” she said. “I heard some of our old classmates saying getting to school was like getting to family. Well, what does it take to make Manassas that family again?
“How do we make Manassas a more effective neighborhood? We must ask the question of the folk who are there and then we must seek to do what is asked.”
Dr. Willie C. Williams is “there” at Manassas and was on the dais as Bingham spoke. He’s been the principal since last June, inheriting the dicey situation of guiding the school and its supporters forward after popular former principal James Griffith encountered legal trouble that triggered his abrupt departure.
Before Bingham’s keynote, Williams addressed the massive crowd, acknowledging the shadows cast by “many people who I do not want to disappoint.”
Manassas has challenges, Williams said, “just like any other urban school in the country. But I know one thing; they don’t have what I discovered that we do have. That’s this spirit of Manassas. The spirit that forces people all across the country to think about us constantly, to work and support us throughout the year.”
Noting the work of the Manassas Alumni Association, led by James F. Thompson (Class of 1958), and the support of the Manassas staff he inherited, Williams said, “I could not have done some of the things we’ve done this year in the short time I’ve been here” without them.
The Class of 1967 showed its ongoing support, displaying an enlarged image of a $10,600.67 check for the Manassas Alumni Association Scholarship Fund.
In an exchange later with The New Tri-State Defender, Bingham said, “My understanding about what we got from the school was a foundation that inspired confidence to succeed wherever we were because people challenged and encouraged us. We developed a sense of family and history because people cared about us.”
Going forward, Bingham said she and all others who want to help today’s Manassas must keep a basic premise in mind.
“Any time we want to help, we must partner with the people that we are offering our services to because they are the experts,” she said.
“When we join what we know with what they want and know, then we can make a positive difference.”
