Robert Woodson Sr.: A Compassionate Conservative

By Joseph Young
WI Staff Writer
Thursday, February 8, 2007

Gangs proliferated in his west Philadelphia community, but the demands they placed on Robert L. Woodson Sr. was even worse than the thugs themselves. He resisted joining a gang, leaving him to walk to and from school in fear, from kindergarten and up. He had to fight a lot. His selection of which high school to attend was determined by the school his “boys” were going to. “Not the academic program,” Woodson said, “but where you could physically survive.”

  
He needed the security that numbers provided. There was strength in numbers.

Woodson dropped out of Overbrook High School in the eleventh grade because the cohorts he ran around with graduated a year ahead of him.

He didn’t think he would have survived at Overbrook.
  
His “boys” were called the Knights of the Turn Table, but they did not think of themselves as a gang. 
  
“The distinction was: gangs were predatory. They sought to hurt people,” Woodson said. “We affiliated to socialize and protect one another. But ours was strictly defensive, never aggressive. You had to be affiliated with somebody. If you were a loner, you got beaten up all the time.”
  
Then, after dropping out of high school, Woodson joined the Air Force, obtained his GED and took some college courses. After finishing his 4-year stint in the military, Woodson did his undergraduate work at historically Black Cheyney University and received a scholarship to go to graduate school. He attended the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a master’s degree in social work. 
  
All the while, he worked at a juvenile detention center, which encouraged him to make youth outreach his life’s charge. He drew from violence-related tragedies in his own life, including the murder of his brother and a nephew who was shot to death by one of his close friends.
  
Woodson, 65, is now president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE), a nonprofit organization which he founded in 1981 to revitalize low-income communities. A strong proponent of self-help, its primary focus has been on reducing youth violence with its Violence-Free Zone initiative and addressing violence in schools and communities.
  
“A lot of young people who are in those communities weren’t as blessed as I was, but I don’t think it’s a lack of will to succeed,” Woodson said. “It’s a lack of opportunity. Kids just need to know that somebody loves them.”
  
The Violence-Free Zone initiative is directed by CNE, and implemented by community-based organizations. The East Capitol Center for Change implements the sites at Bladensburg and Largo high schools in Prince George’s County and Kelly Miller Middle School in the District.   
  
The initiative, now in 25 schools and five cities, is unique. It employs young adults from the same neighborhoods and backgrounds as the students in the schools.
  
“The youth advisors are people who have community hearts,” said Curtis Watkins, founder of the East Capitol Center for Change. “They understand and have traveled some of the challenges that young people face on a daily basis. They have been testimonies of what can happen when you refocus that negative stuff to a positive aspect of life.”
  
The advisors act as mentors, counselors and role models. “We have a lot of behavioral issues in the school,” Sheena Tuckson, principal of Kelly Miller Middle School in Northeast Washington, said. “We did not have enough available staff to monitor the halls or make sure that students got to their classrooms and stayed in their classrooms.”
  
The East Capitol Center for Change, Tuckson said, has “been a big help in monitoring the lunchroom period in the cafeteria. They act as mentors especially for my male students and role models for certain identified male students in the school. So while the parents may not be here they do know they have a caring adult who is in the building.”    
  
Woodson agreed. “When you can reach around all of the anger, reach around all of the hostility, as people … still reached inside and put their arms around me and loved me when I wasn’t lovable, that’s what it takes.”