Hope and Dreams

He knows that a college degree is a long shot for them, but that's okay. A four-year college education is not the only measure of success. For some, success means going on to community college, to trade school, or to a steady job. "As long as they're good citizens who can survive on their own and not be a burden to society, I think they're successful," he says. But even such modest outcomes are not guaranteed. As the children get older, the challenge is to keep them engaged. Last year, to accommodate the tenth-graders' involvement in other after-school activities or part-time jobs, the staff asked that they attend the program two days a week, rather than four. Some stayed connected, some drifted farther from the group.

Out of the original Durham Scholars class, whose students enter eleventh grade this fall, all but three students still participate. The staff realizes that some children will drop out, but that doesn't make losing any of them any easier. "I can't tell you how many nights I've woken up at two in the morning thinking about some kid in the program," Johnson says.

Hope and Dreams III: "The Ben & Jerry's of auto parts"

Car World Auto Parts was struggling. Competing against larger chain stores, John Deberry, 40, was determined to make his two-person shop succeed, not simply to realize a longtime personal dream but also for the sake of the neighborhood. Hayti (pronounced "HAY-tie"), a predominantly African-American community within Durham, had once been a thriving district filled with black-owned businesses.

When Deberry came across a newspaper article about Jim Johnson, he called the professor for help. Through a program called the Urban Enterprise Corps, Johnson would assign MBA students from UNC and other schools to community-development nonprofits or directly to businesses that couldn't afford to pay for high-priced consultants. The MBAs offered technical assistance and shared the principles of sound business development: strategy, marketing, budgeting, long-term planning, and capital raising. Working with Deberry, a team of MBAs suggested that he receive deliveries every day, rather than every three days. By replenishing his stock in fewer than 24 hours, he could spend less on inventory without limiting what he offered to customers. Car World also needed large monthly contracts instead of relying so heavily on walk-in business, where the chains held a big advantage. With the corps's help, Deberry landed municipal contracts worth $2,500 a month -- five times as much as the one contract he already had with the city.

Over the past three years, Deberry's overall monthly revenue has doubled to $25,000. He's added three full-time employees. For Johnson, the significance of Car World's survival goes beyond mere numbers. Deberry is Johnson's kind of community entrepreneur, one who's determined to be both successful and socially responsible. As the handwritten sign in Deberry's store window promises, "We pledge to support the community."

And Deberry means it. Since opening Car World for business in 1995, he's been involved. He has donated a car to a homeless shelter and has volunteered as a mentor to at-risk young men. When the marching band at Central was raising money to buy new uniforms, he chipped in. When the Durham Disciples, a local basketball team, needed money to travel to an out-of-town hoops tournament, he put chocolate-chip cookies next to his cash register and sold them for 50 cents apiece. And when a local group passed the hat for a mural honoring Hayti, Deberry put in a $100 contribution. He sees himself as part of a rich tradition of entrepreneurs.

Fifty years ago, the Hayti neighborhood was bustling with business opportunities, racial segregation be damned. Located across the railroad tracks from Durham's downtown, Hayti was home to more than 150 black-owned businesses: Baldwin's Furniture Co., Speight's Auto Service, Union Insurance & Realty Co.. After visiting the area in 1910, Booker T. Washington proclaimed Durham to be a "city of Negro enterprise."

But the Hayti of old is history now. With integration, many black businesses relocated to downtown, and those that remained left when the Durham Freeway bulldozed its way through the neighborhood in the name of urban renewal. Deberry wants to help rebuild the neighborhood by running a store "where everybody knows your name," he says. Some of the Car World regulars are retirees who ran businesses in Hayti. More often than not, they drop by not to shop but to check on Deberry, and they regale him with stories about the days when Nat King Cole played the Regal Theatre on nearby Pettigrew Street. Someday, Deberry hopes to display pictures that show how Hayti used to be and that show the people who built it.

In the meantime, he's looking for ways to develop business, to become what he calls "the Ben & Jerry's of auto parts" in black communities. The contacts that he's made through Johnson can only help. Among the speakers whom he's met at the business school are Secretary of Commerce William Daley and the U.S. ambassador to Brazil. When Deberry runs a new idea by him, Johnson often connects Deberry with someone who can help. Deberry's latest plan is to take advantage of his minority status and to act as a middleman between government departments and manufacturers via the Internet. "This one could be big," he says.

And that could be big for Hayti.