Jonathan Pulphus, Jr., an emerging young leader in the Ferguson movement and a Saint Louis University student, has been named the 2014 Jamala Rogers Young Visionary Awardee by the Organization for Black Struggle’s Youth Council for Positive Development.
The award – which comes with a $2,000 scholarship – recognizes students who demonstrate leadership in social justice both on campus and in the community. Pulphus is majoring in African American Studies and is a member of the African American Male Scholars Initiative.
“Whatever space I’m in, whether it’s at Saint Louis University or in Ferguson, I want to be a change agent,” Pulphus said. “Young people must assume the responsibility of leadership in this movement moment.”
In response to Michael Brown Jr.’s shooting death, Pulphus created the activist group Tribe X with SLU student Alisha Sonnier, now Tribe X’s president, along with several youth from the community.
Their mission is to address systemic racism locally and globally by organizing and educating.
“We are a family of people who were bonded in our pursuit of justice,” according to a Tribe X statement. “In that endeavor in Ferguson, we experienced great trials and tribulations in the form of being gassed, assaulted, and unjustly jailed.”
Tribe X led the Ferguson movement’s first mass die-in, which has become a symbol of solidarity around the world. During Ferguson October, the group also led a march through the Shaw neighborhood, which ended in the historic and spontaneous occupation of SLU’s campus. After the occupation, Tribe X then led the negotiations on an agreement with SLU president Fred Pestello on 13 demands for a more equitable campus and community.
“We presented of 10 of the line items and the president added three,” he said. “During the negotiation, a lot of Tribe members got an opportunity to express their frustration.”
The demands included increased financial aid resources for retention of African-American students at SLU, as well as additional college prep workshops for students in the area’s most disadvantaged school districts. Also related to recruitment, Pestello agree to establish a K-12 bridge program, including summer programs, in the Normandy and Shaw neighborhoods to help increase number of college-bound students from neighborhoods in those areas.
According to the council, award recipients are visionaries responding to society’s most pressing social, political and economic issues.
“The recipient’s actions or project helped to change public policies, impacted a critical issue, created innovative models of service or strengthened an important community institution,” according to the council.
The award is named after Jamala Rogers, a respected community leader, who was motivated to become active in social justice movements as a teen. She has inspired thousands of young people to use their time, talents and skills to impact and transform their communities in meaningful ways.
“It is our belief that Mike Brown’s death lit the fuse to an already crafted bomb,” stated Tribe X leaders in an October statement after the SLU occupation. “Ferguson made us but it did not break us. It did create a determination in us to change the system that created and allowed the death of Mike Brown to occur. With that resolve it was our aim to not only demand justice but to create systematic changes that were for the benefit of people in the St. Louis region.”
Information about the scholarship is available at www.positiveyouthdev.com.
