Our History

Phillip Jackson founded The Black Star Project in 1996. From its beginning, TBSP has worked to improve the lives of people in low-income Black and Latinx communities with a focus on closing the academic achievement gap in communities the organization serves. In recent years, TBSP expanded its focus beyond academics to include economic empowerment.

Upon its founding, TBSP introduced two initiatives--Student Motivation Program (designed to address the racial academic achievement gap) and Barbara Ann Sizemore Communiversity for Educational Excellence (provided a platform for broad community engagement through dialogue and advocacy). These early programs set the stage for TBSP’s strong support base by actively responding to the needs of the communities it serves. TBSP’s work has since expanded to include tutoring, mentoring, parent advocacy and development, financial literacy, violence prevention, college preparation, school environment support, and workforce development. Many of these programs and initiatives are designed to improve the life-outcomes and achievement of young African-American males. To this day, TBSP remains committed to the tradition of improving education in our communities, with the support and involvement of those it serves. 

How Was The Black Star Project Started?

Although The Black Star Project was incorporated with the State of Illinois in 1996, its genesis of the project dates back to 1964 in the school yard at DuSable Upper Grade Center in the shadows of the newly build Robert Taylor Holmes public housing project in Chicago’s Bronzeville community. Every school day was spent with about 1500 seventh- and eighth-grade students left unsupervised in a one square block barren, gravel playground for 30 minutes before and after school and during a one-hour lunch period. That barren lot came to be known as “the Killing Field”.  

Because no teachers were ever assigned to this area, and because these students had no strong, positive role models to look up to, and no one to give them guidance or counseling; they created their own role models and their own value systems.  They created a new society that was probably the precursor to many of the chaotic situations that we find today in some schools.  The children turned to street gangs for guidance and to violence as the highest value in this new society.  And I, Phillip Jackson, watched in terror as this ‘brave new world” unfolded!

He prayed for someone strong and positive to come to his school to tell his fellow students that gangs and violence were not the way.  This was before drugs had taken a stronghold in our communities.  While he was a decent student, there were only few among the 1500 students.  They were treated as outcasts by this new society.  Many of his“smart” peers were targeted for severe beatings that led to broken bones and hospital stays.  And no teachers or adults ever graced “the Killing Field” nor did they ever see any non-teacher adult in any of the classrooms who could tell the students what they needed to do to transcend and transform their so far short, violent lives.  He prayed for this kind of person.

Eventually he moved out of public housing and went on to have some success in life, but he never forgot his experiences on that playground. In 1995, he was offered a job at the Chicago Public Schools as a top official in an educational re-engineering initiative orchestrated by Mayor Richard M. Daley.  This was his chance to do what he always wanted to do make the difference in the lives of children who were fighting against being swallowed by the angst, anger and despair of many of their communities.  He wanted to give the children options, to give them hope….something that no one ever gave him when he attended 11 different public schools with some of the worst reputations in the city. 

While working for the Chicago Public Schools and doing important work, he wanted to make a difference in the lives of all 430,000 students who were in the system, but he found himself simply making the system run.  He did not feel that his efforts were directly touching the lives of the children who were just like him.  He kept hearing their silent cries for help, like his silent cries before them, asking for somebody strong and positive to come into their lives to help take them to a place where they could be safe and valued for their hard work, healthy living and their willingness to play by the rules even though they were dealt a terrible hand.   

He decided to bring strong, positive role models into the lives of thousands of children.  People did not understand himat first.  They asked him, “Why don’t you find one or two kids and mentor them?”  He told them, “Helping one or two kids is not going to change the lives of the tens of thousands who need mentoring.”  He decided to create a program that would do for thousands of children what he wanted done for himself.  The Black Star Student Motivation Program (TBSSMP) was born in August of 1996.

Since 1996, TBSSMP the student motivation program has served almost 70,000 students of all races in more than 160 Chicago area public, private, catholic, city and suburban schools and has helped thousands of students prepare for higher education.  The program also provided celebrity readers to several thousand students.  Through Parent University, we reached out to the parents of tens of thousands of students to help make them better parents and to help them partner with the teachers and schools that their children attend.

Would any of this have come about if Phillip Jackson had not had his “not so good” experiences in public schools?  We doubt it.  Has The Black Star Project made a significant impact in the lives of tens of thousands of students? Yes.  Have we changed the society and the systems that are creating the issues for these children?  Not even close.  There is much more work to do.  But we have started. 

The Black Star Student Motivation Program is working to expand its programming to more comprehensively address the needs of students and to reach more of them.  Several times a year, I go to elementary schools and I speak to 7th- and 8th-grade students.  Those students don’t realize that I have special feelings for the quiet little boy or girl in the back, not saying anything, but understanding all that I am telling them about the lives that they can have.   I tell them all of the things that I needed to hear.  And without making a direct reference to them, I tell the other children how important it is to be respectful of children who are trying to learn.  I tell them that they must respect those children because, one day, that student might come into their children’s class to motivate, inspire, enlighten and educate their child, just like me.  That is when I can see the light come on in many students’ eyes who know that I am one of them.

Extended History

The mission of The Black Star Project (TBSP) is to eliminate the racial academic achievement gap. The Black Star Project has designed itself to produce and deliver community-­driven educational support programs, services, campaigns and initiatives that help pre­-school through college students succeed academically with the help of their parents, extended families, neighborhoods, and communities. This mission is driven by a vision for Black and Brown children to become globally competent, globally compassionate 21st-­century global citizens.

The Black Star Project was founded in 1996 to improve the quality of life in Chicago's Black and Brown communities by eliminating the racial academic achievement gap, which leads to many other quality­ of ­life gaps.

TBSP, which began as a small mentoring program in two Chicago public schools, has grown into an organization with national impact based on its innovative programs, campaigns and initiatives that engage and inspire students, parents and whole communities to improve students' educational outcomes. Black Star works to help pre-­school through college students succeed academically by advocating for and facilitating educational services, while supporting parents, families and communities to effectively provide educational support for children.

The Black Star Project's multiple initiatives address parent engagement, youth development and educational advocacy. At its inception in 1996, TBSP introduced two programs: Student Motivation and Mentoring Program (SMMP), a classroom-­based mentoring model with motivational speakers designed to inspire students to do well in school, and the Barbara Ann Sizemore Communiversity for Educational Excellence—a series of community meetings using a full-­participation-­dialogue model in a public arena to generate action through organized advocacy on a variety of issues concerning closing the academic achievement gap. In its second year (1997), The Black Star Project introduced Silas B. Purnell Destination College, an initiative designed to promote awareness during middle school about the importance of post­-secondary education. Destination College was expanded in 2005 to include a series of workshops and college tours, facilitated by college students, to prepare high school students to successfully apply to, attend and succeed in college. Shortly thereafter, TBSP added college fairs throughout the city in an initiative known as Jump Start on College.

In 2004, the first annual Million Father March was launched as a nationwide event to mobilize Black fathers and male caregivers to take their children to school on the first school day. That same year, The Black Star Project rolled out Parent University, designed to equip parents with the essential skills along with the necessary information and resources to help build stronger families to ensure the proper education of their children. Fathers Club, which organized and hosted free educational and recreational outings for fathers, significant male caregivers, and their children, also began that year. Fathers Club encouraged men to work for educational and other positive changes in their communities.

In March of 2007, TBSP coordinated its first Men In Schools (MIS) initiative, a comprehensive campaign designed to encourage men to volunteer in schools. In 2008, led by Fathers Club members, MIS expanded its programming for an entire week—Men in Schools week included a full 5 days of activities and opportunities for fathers to support their children's educational environments by volunteering.

Early in 2008, TBSP launched Parent of the Year Awards to acknowledge and reward outstanding parents at public and private schools throughout Chicago; the Golden Parent Award of cash was given to the top-­rated parents in Chicago schools. Next, the Black Star Scholars Tutoring program, which started in four of Chicago's public schools, was expanded to 25 public schools. Soon thereafter, the Take a Young Black Male to Worship campaign began reaching out to engage and encourage Black churches to mentor young Black men as well as for each church to adopt one school throughout the year.

Since 2007, The Black Star Project has been tracking youth violence in Chicago. Beyond the obvious tragedy of pre­mature and senseless injuries and deaths, when students do not feel safe, their academic achievement suffers. TBSP initially responded to this horrific situation with organized marches, vigils, student auditorium sessions, conflict­ resolution workshops, and public forums with workshops for parents about gangs and violence. After 53 Chicago students, ages 18 and under were killed during the 2008-­09 school year, TBSP organized its staff and community volunteers around a campaign called Peace in the Hood. Armed with information, posters, wristbands and t-­shirts, TBSP's command central dispatched groups of individuals to the Chicago neighborhoods most devastated by violence, and worked to inspire and prepare disengaged, hopeless youth to end the violence, continue their education and seek employment.

The Black Star Project's youth programming expanded in 2009 to include more intensive mentoring, job fairs, and training opportunities, especially for at­risk students. Additionally, TBSP has overseen a variety of summer jobs programs, during which students were trained for and placed in various positions, including performing administrative work at TBSP headquarters, selling books to area churches and schools, cleaning up neighborhood trash, and tutoring younger students. TBSP has also facilitated intensive, in-­school mentoring services for more than 200 students in The Chicago Public Schools. Additionally, it established a mentoring program for 70 young men, called The Young Black Men of Honor.

In the spring of 2011, The Black Star Project launched Saturday University, a network of Saturday schools designed to quickly remediate issues with students who performed below grade level academically and to accelerate the progress of students who operate at grade level.

In 2012, TBSP, in partnership with the Open Society Foundation's Campaign for Black Male Achievement, continued its commitment to the betterment of Black males, and Black and Brown youth generally, by developing and distributing organizing guides, based on its experiences and lessons learned while conducting its most popular, scalable programs. These step-­by-­step, how-­to guides continue to be updated annually to help people and organizations create, manage, and support such programs nationwide by replicating or adapting them to specific communities' needs. Organizing guides were developed for and continue to be distributed for such key initiatives as: Million Father March, Take a Young Black Male to Worship, Real Men Read, Destination College, Saturday University, Daddy Daughter Dance, and the multi-component Black Male Achievement Initiative.

Since its founding in 1996, TBSP has vastly expanded from a small mentoring and educational advocacy nonprofit to an organization known for the breadth and depth of its actions with programs and initiatives in tutoring, mentoring, parent advocacy and development, violence prevention, college preparation, school environment support, and workforce development. Regardless of how much it expands, to this day, TBSP remains committed to the tradition of improving education and development in our communities, with the support and involvement of those it serves.