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High School Students in Hartford Talk Values With Former Ambassador to South Africa

JMA Students Javon Franklin, Sharonda Williams, and Jordan Goffe
Osval Mendez, Danny White, and Leah Kardulis interview former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, James Joseph.

Students from the Journalism and Media Academy magnet school abandoned their typical blue uniforms for formal attire as they interviewed an American civil rights leader who also struggled to end apartheid alongside Nelson Mandela.

Junior Danny White was one of six students who got to interview James Joseph at the Learning Lab, which hosts a satellite campus for JMA students.

"It was definitely a surreal experience," White said.

The students had a chance to ask him about his life, about growing up in the segregated south, and how he was able to do all that he's done.

"My mother always told me that in order to have half a chance as the white young people my age I would have to be twice as good," Joseph told the students, who took turns interviewing the former diplomat in groups of three. "And so I was driven by this desire and vision of excellence, and so that kept me going even in my worst moments of growing up."

Joseph graduated from Yale and then moved to Alabama to join the civil rights movement. In the south, he was confronted with racism constantly.

Listen to the entire interview below.

JMA junior Leah Kardulis asked him how kept himself from being driven by anger.

"Growing up in your era, we heard that you didn't retaliate against your enemies, and you learned to love them," Kardulis said. "How did you learn that?"

"Well we have to define love here," Joseph said. "Because that doesn't mean I learned to like them. I developed a respect for their humanity and so I saw them as human like me."

White asked Joseph, who's in his 80s, if he's still as driven now as he was back then.

"Even as I got older, I still had this feeling that I had to make some kind of contribution and that I would not be afraid," Joseph said.

"So you could say that drive to make a change never really left?" White asked.

"No, and it's still there today," Joseph said. "Even as I get access to board rooms, and access to cabinet meetings, I still reserve the right to return to the streets if I think it's necessary."

Credit JMA Students Javon Franklin, Sharonda Williams, and Jordan Goffe
Janee Johnson, Dylan Donato, and Dilano Williams interview former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, James Joseph.

White said he learned a lot from the interview.

"You're gonna make mistakes," he said. "The more you focus on not making mistakes, that's when you do. So instead of focusing on the negative and what's you're not gonna do, just go out there and get it done."

The hour-long interview was the pinnacle of semester-long project on radio talk shows.

The high school class at The Learning Labis part of a partnership between Connecticut Public Broadcasting and Hartford Public Schools. 

David finds and tells stories about education and learning for WNPR radio and its website. He also teaches journalism and media literacy to high school students, and he starts the year with the lesson: “Conflicts of interest: Real or perceived? Both matter.” He thinks he has a sense of humor, and he also finds writing in the third person awkward, but he does it anyway.

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