More than 20 local and national experts from universities, agencies, and business

• Civil rights legends
• Keynote speaker
• Panel of Judges
• Plenary speakers
• Educators

The Summit once again brought together talented and intellectually gifted students from cities across the United States to work with leading educators, academics, and economists to examine the school to prison pipeline, create a model of discipline based on inherent strengths and develop innovative economic strategies not dependent upon the current system of mass incarceration. Students will be challenged and encouraged to pursue a resurgence of academic excellence, highly engaged educators and exceptional expectations for themselves and those that serve them.

• High school student leaders and college freshmen from cities throughout the US
• Workshop Facilitators – local and national experts
• Keynote Speaker
• Plenary speakers
• Chaperones
• Schools and organizations are asked to select students based on intellectual capacity and leadership skills regardless of academic performance or disciplinary record.  A registered chaperone is required for all participants under the age of 18 or for every group of ten students.*

The full registration fee covers each participant’s meals as stated below, materials, and participation in all plenary sessions and workshops throughout the Summit. Early registration is strongly urged due to limited seating. Payment may be made by check payable to The Ethics Project and mailed to 40 N. Kingshighway 12F, St. Louis, MO 63108, through your school or district or on-line below. Personal checks must be received at least four weeks in advance.

Students may be substituted at any time with advance notice. Due to the size and complexities of the Summit plenary sessions and workshops, registration fees are non-refundable.

Students and chaperones are responsible for hotel accommodations. Early reservations are encouraged. Discount sites such as Expedia or Travelocity are recommended. Drury Inns provide both breakfast and evening meals in their cost.

Heavy hor de’ oeuvres will be served at the opening reception for registered participants. (Ala Carte)*                                                             

Lunches will be provided Monday and Tuesday.
Dinner will be provided at a social event on Monday for all registered and paid students and chaperones. (Ala Carte)

Students and chaperones are encouraged to arrive early to tour one or more of the following free sites:

• Dexter Avenue Baptist Church – The only church that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pastored
• The Alabama State Capitol Building
• The National Memorial for Peace and Justice
• The Rosa Parks Statute
• The Rosa Parks Museum
• The Civil Rights Memorial

For more information on these and other sites visit https://www.visitjackson.com/must-see-and-do  

REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED. VISIT US AGAIN TO REGISTER FOR TheNYS 2021

To make a donation, please click here.

The Clark | Fox Foundation
The McCarthy Building Group
The King Collection at Morehouse College
Now Former US Senator, Claire McCaskill
Tod Martin, Deputy Chief of Staff, Office of then US Senator Claire McCaskill
Francis G. Slay, Then Mayor, City of St. Louis
Charlie Dooley, Former St. Louis County Executive
Ambassador Andrew Young, Chair, Andrew J. Young Foundation

Dr. Kelvin Adams, Superintendent, St. Louis Public Schools

The Honorable Frankie Freeman, Esq., Former Commissioner, US Commission on Civil Rights
Chief Sam Dotson, Former Chief of Police, St. Louis Metropolitan Police Dept.
Chief, Jon Belmar, Chief, St. Louis County Police Dept.  

 Judge James Dowd, Former Chief Judge, Mo Court of Appeals

Judge Jimmie Edwards, Former Presiding Judge Juvenile Court, Founder, Innovative Concept Academy & Nat’l Judge of the Year

Judge David Mason, Former Presiding Judge, St. Louis City Juvenile Court

C. Jessel Strong, Immediate Past-President, St. Louis Clergy Coalition
Michael Jones, Pastor, Friendly Temple

Dr. Freddy J. Clark, Pastor, Shalom Church

Rodney Francis, Former Pastor, Washington Tabernacle Church & Executive Dir., Youth & Family Center

Donald Suggs, Publisher, and Executive Editor, St. Louis American Newspaper
Maxine Clark, Founder, Build-a-Bear Workshop & CEO, Clark-Fox Family Foundation
Lynne M. Jackson, Great great-granddaughter of Dred and Harriet Scott and Founder, President,

Dred & Harriett Scott Foundation

 Ken Morris, Jr, Great-great-great-grandson of Frederick Douglass, great-great-grandson of Booker T. Washington, and the Co-Founder and President of the Frederick Douglas Family Initiatives

 Joseph Anderson, Immediate Past-President, 100 Black Men of St. Louis
Flint Fowler, President, Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club

Adrian Bracy, President, St. Louis Metropolitan YWCA
Stefan Bradley, PhD., Director of African American Studies, St. Louis University
Tony Neal, Founder, and CEO, Educational Equity Consultants
Halbert Sullivan, CEO, Father Support Center
Adolphus Pruitt, President, NAACP, St. Louis Branch

The Honorable Paul Reiber, Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court

Planning for The National Youth Summit on Education, Justice and the US Economy (NYS) began in August 2013, to give ownership to youth in solving increasingly entrenched problems of disparities in education, economic opportunities and the criminal justice system that broadly impinges upon the entire nation and disproportionately impacts students of color.

Thanks to the generosity of the Clark Fox Family Foundation and other generous donors, the Summit has been held at The Touhill Performing Arts Center in St. Louis, UMSL, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC and Howard University. And thanks to the generosity of the Clark | Fox Family Foundation and the McCarthy Building Group, the Summit was held at Morehouse College and Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. Students participate in two full days of plenary sessions and workshops on education, justice, entrepreneurship, economics, and STEM.

By engaging youth of diverse backgrounds from 50 cities across the United States, The Summit provides an unprecedented opportunity to support the progress of White House initiatives and to heighten awareness of the problems faced by students of color. With these young men and women being our next generation of leaders, the Summit will specifically explore strategies to:

Increase high school graduation rates
Lower unemployment rates
Broaden academic visions
Improve economic mobility and opportunities
Improve school discipline
Decrease crime and over-incarceration
Increase education achievement
Decrease human and socio-economic costs
Increase STEMM awareness & opportunities
Develop tools for increased communication
Diminish racial barriers
Unify law enforcement and the community

The Black Silicon Valley, LLC. (BSV) is a national technology incubator/accelerator housed in 100,000 sq.ft. state of the art technology campus in Atlanta, GA. BSV specializes in connecting and preparing historically disconnected and underserved populations for the full and equitable participation in high growth technological entrepreneurship and the emerging innovation economy. This critical work is accomplished by establishing outcome-driven partnerships with the nation’s “mainstream” economic development organizations and resource providers (i.e. incubators, accelerators, early-stage funders, foundations, government, academia, mature companies etc.), and strategically aligned (yet disconnected) ethnic minority stakeholders.

The minority stakeholders and organizations that (BSV) targets are those who maintain the necessary backgrounds and skill sets to immediately participate in emerging innovation ecosystems, but do not operate within the day-to-day traditional and longstanding mainstream innovation networks. By virtue of bringing these disconnected networks together, BSV is able to positively impact the three most critical components of any emerging innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem –deals, technology, and talent

This Economic Rights agenda will provide economic impact, wealth, job creation, technology skills training, and access to the most important industry in the world. A specific emphasis will be on youth technology training and entrepreneurship to address the significant gap in prison complex and the education/technology complex for young African Americans. Mentoring on ownership will be an asset and solution for this pressing ill as we have witnessed in Ferguson, Mo.

Co-Founders

Winston Johnson

Dr. E. Lance McCarthy

Paul E. Hiles

EDUCATION

Dr. Ivory Toldson, Ph.D. Assoc. Professor of Counseling Psychology, Howard University and Deputy Director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Maxine Clark, Founder and former CEO, Build-a-Bear Corporation
Tony Neal, President, and CEO of Educational Equity Consultants
Dr. Michael Railey, Assoc. Dean, Multicultural Affairs, St. Louis University School of Medicine (NYS 2015)

SOCIAL JUSTICE 

Judge Jimmie Edwards, former Presiding Judge, St. Louis City Juvenile Court, National Judge of the Year, Founder Innovative Concept Academy
Kymberly Smith Jackson, former US Prosecuting Attorney, Principal, Phoenix Law Firm, Washington, DC
Terrence Roberts, Ph.D., one of The Little Rock Nine & Founder of The Little Rock Nine Foundation
The Hon. Michael Wolf, former Chief Judge, Mo Supreme Court, Dean, Saint Louis University School of Law (NYS 2015)                      James Forman Jr, JD., Professor of Law, Yale Law School, author, Locking Up Our Own (2017)                                                  Theron Pride, Chief of Staff and Senior Counsel, Office of Justice Programs, US Dept. of Justice (Obama Admin.) (2015)
Adjoa Aiyetoro, JD, Assoc. Professor of Law, Director, Racial Disparities in the Arkansas Criminal Justice System Research Project (2015) University of Arkansas, Little Rock, School of Law (NYS 2015)
Roger Goldman, JD, Emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law and author, St. Louis University School of Law (NYS 2015)

ECONOMICS

Amb. Andrew Young, former US Ambassador, Atlanta Mayor and advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Lance McCarthy: Director, Ferguson 1000 and co-founder, Black Silicon ValleyRichard Rosenfeld, Ph.D., Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri St. Louis and author of Economics and Youth Violence: Crime, Disadvantage, and Community (NYS 2015)
Ben O’Dell, Assoc. Director, Ctr. for Faith-Based & Neighborhood Partnerships, US Dept. of Health & Human Services
Jade Harrell, Producer, Radio Host, and Businesswoman, Clear Channel Broadcasting
Jaylen Bledsoe, 17 yr old CEO and President of The Jaylen D. Bledsoe Global Group technology company (NYS 2015)
b. Marcell Williams, Founder of Jewels Inc. and b. Marcell Youth Ministries
Reginald Dickson, Retired CEO, Inroads, principal investor and Fortune 500 Board member
Karon Bolden, National Youth Motivational Speaker & CEO of Street Dreamz Recording Studio                                             Sidney Keyes III, Eleven-year-old entrepreneur and founder of Bros and Books

* Due to the demands of these outstanding speakers, their availability may change. We thank each of them for donating their time to this important work.

EDUCATION

• • • Discipline through engagement
    • Teaching from a business perspective
    • Returning educators to education
    • Undoing the school to prison pipeline
    • Leadership in a college environment
    • Shaping the picture of an educated America
    • The Role of Faith-Based Communities
    • Thinking outside the box to curb violence in schools
    • Reducing prisons to reduce violence
    • Flipping the channels from violence to victories
    • Financial literacy from birth
    • Creating safe homes to create safe schools
    • Learning to Leverage Relationships
    • Social media for social change
    • Using STEMM to stem violence
    • Prisons to prep schools

SOCIAL JUSTICE

• • • The hard truth – When justice means Just US
    • Who’s running this anyway
    • Youth Violence, Facing the Challenges for Youth
    • Recapturing world leadership through ethics and justice
    • Undoing the pipelines to prison
    • The hard truth – When justice means Just US
    • Electing leaders who lead
    • Drug Courts and other alternatives
    • Toward a less punitive society
    • The problem with privilege
    • Capping pipelines to prison
    • When communities thrive at the cost of others’ lives
    • Strategies for justice
    • Reshaping the conversation on crime and punishment
    • Shaping the picture of a just and humane society
    • Family Matters

ECONOMICS

• • • • The economics of mass- incarcerations (when crime pays)
      • Understanding income equality
      • Violence prevention through economic empowerment
      • Public health, public wealth
      • The financial cost of human suffering
      • Shaping a new economy
      • Violence prevention through economic empowerment
      • Returning to apprenticeships
      • Resources for reentry
      • Violence prevention through economic empowerment
      • Why the rich get richer
      • Beyond the minimum wage
      • The Economics of Youth Violence
      • Earning gaps and other inequities
      • Creating income equality
  • • Generating growth in economically suppressed communities

Details of each Summit will be updated periodically. Please check back often under the Agenda tab.

DAY 1

STUDENTS ARRIVE IN HOST CITY, CHECK INTO HOTEL  PERSONAL TIME.

5:00 Opening ceremony and reception open to all registered participants (Ala Carte)* An opening ceremony will take place only if sufficient interest is indicated by November 1st.

7:00 Comments from designated guests and speakers

8:00 Reception ends

DAY 2

8:15 Travel to Plenary Session

8:30 Doors open and seating begins

9:00 Welcome

9:10 Plenary Session I – Opening Session, The general body will view a documentary on contributions of youth to civil rights movements and other world events created by Webster University School of Communications featuring Former US Ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, Terrence Roberts, one of The Little Rock Nine, The Honorable Frankie Freeman, first woman appointed to the US Commission on Civil Rights and member of the Commission on Presidential Scholars, and Sr. Antona Ebo, who was one of The Little Rock Nine. There will be a panel discussion with Dr. Roberts, Dr. Bernard Lafayette and Lynne Jackson, the great, great granddaughter of Dred and Harriet Scott and Founder and President of The Dred and Harriet Scott Foundation.

10:00  Plenary Session II – Plenary Speaker

11:00 – Plenary Session III – Plenary Speaker

12:00 –  Lunch

12:50  – Seating for afternoon plenary sessions

1:00 – Keynote address, Q & A and discussion

2:00 – Plenary Session IV – Plenary Speaker

3:00 – Plenary Session V – Plenary Speaker

3:50 – Closing remarks – Exit

5:30  – Special student social TBA

DAY 3

8:30 Arrival

9:00 Session I Workshops

9:50 Travel to Session II Workshops

10:00 Session II Workshops

10:50 Break, snack, travel to Session III Workshops

11:00 Session III Workshops

12:00 Brief Lunch and choice of Campus Tours or Documentary Screening

1:50  Travel to Session IV Workshops

2:00 Session IV Workshops

2:50 Travel to Session V Workshops

3:00 Session V Workshops

3:45 Debriefing

4:00 Departure