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ARLINGTON -- Fourteen- year-old Tanisha Newbill had never heard of Emmett Till, who was Newbill's age in 1955 when he was beaten to death in Money, Miss., for whistling at a white woman.
And Adam Jackson, also 14, never knew that the X in Malcolm X's name came about because the black activist did not want to bear the name given to his ancestors by a slave master.
Students like Newbill and Jackson inspired Plano engineer Darryl Chamberlain to start The Gloryworks Experience, which uses artwork to depict African-American history.
He's traveled as far as Iowa to organize assemblies designed to inspire students to educate themselves about injustice and motivate them to do something about it.
Using contemporary examples like the trial of John William King, who was convicted and sentenceed to death this week for dragging a black man to death in Jasper, Chamberlain conducted two assemblies for the students at Young Junior High School yesterday.
"If we're not addressing racism, if we're doing nothing to teach our children, then we have not safeguarded them so that they won't become another King in Jasper," Chamberlain said.
Students yesterday shouted, stomped and yelled in disbelief as Chamberlain took them on a journey through Jim Crow laws, lynchings and the tenacity of slaves and ex-slaves to succeed in spite of such circumstances.
Gloryworks, which was started in 1992, features busts that Chamberlain sculpted. The busts are of trailblazers, both black and white, who have fought injustice in America.
The most recent sculpture depicts Craig Kielburger, a Canadian boy, who was 12 when he documented modern-day slavery in India and was able to bring about a change in export laws in Canada.
"He talks about how they made a difference and encourages them just like the kid from Canada," Young Junior High Principal Bill Burdette said. "He encourages them to recognize injustice and what they can do about it."
Burdette invited Gloryworks to perform three years ago, and invited Chamberlain back to educate a new wave of seventh- and eighth- graders.
One of the most dramatic points in the assembly occurred when the Rev. Ella McDonald, a guest accompanying Chamberlain, recited a James Weldon Johnson spiritual that brought students to their feet.
"When that lady told the poem and the way they talked it was so dramatic," seventh- grader Jessica Johnson said after the assembly.
McDonald, 43, learned the poem several years ago to help Chamberlain after a high school student who was scheduled to perform backed out three days before the performance. McDonald, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, continues to travel with Chamberlain.
"I love to see him work," she said. "When I was coming up I didn't hear this history. I didn't learn these things until I met him."
Chamberlain charges about $250 for an hourlong presentation at a school and $500 for a full day. The former PTA member in Plano said his rates are a steal.
"I compromise because it's important and there's so little done about black history," he said.
Although he is a full-time engineering technician and a divorced father of six, Chamberlain makes time to do several presentations during the year. February, which is Black History Month, is his busiest time, he said.
Chamberlain said he is motivated by his experiences as a third-grader in the early years of school desegregation in Kansas City in 1965.
He was bused to an all-white elementary school and watched as white parents stared at him with disdain as they pulled their children out of his class.
But when the parents left, the children put aside their prejudices, and Chamberlain learned "that kids can just settle down to being kids and having fun together."
During his presentations, Chamberlain relates modern- day occurrences to explain slavery.
"Some people will say, and they'll be wrong . . . that slavery is about white people holding blacks down," he said. "Slavery is about what happens to a man when making a profit is more important than human life. You see, the drug dealer who values gold hubcaps and gold chains around his neck as more important than your life or your future, if he lived in 1848 he would have been a slave owner because it would have been profitable for him."
Jaime Jordan, (817) 548-5494