Hope and Dreams

Some players were hustlers or users, but most were guys trying to put things right, including some ex-cons who were looking for a second chance. Most players had part-time or temporary work. About one-third of them neither worked nor attended school. One night, Johnson asked the assembled players, "Who has five people they could list as references on a job application?" Hands shot up. "All right, who has five references who aren't your relatives or running mates?" The hands came down. Besides a broad social network, they lacked the necessary social skills, just as the Durham Scholars did. Johnson, who often came dressed in the same custom-tailored suit that he'd worn to the office, emphasized the importance of making a positive first impression. "Be professional," he told the players. "Don't validate the stereotype or give the negative bias a chance to feed."

Despite a rigorous morning routine -- up at 4 AM, in the office by 6 AM -- Johnson came three nights a week and stayed until the games were over. So did Nightflight commissioner Jimmy Black, 39, a financial adviser at Morgan Keegan in Durham. "We couldn't preach about commitment and responsibility if we weren't showing up," says Black, best known in North Carolina as the point guard on the Tar Heels team that won the NCAA championship in 1982.

During the first season, there were 130 players from Durham, Chapel Hill, and even Raleigh, thanks in large part to the transportation provided by the league. During the second season there were twice that many. The success is anecdotal but encouraging, says Black, who has kept in touch with a number of players. After taking an SAT prep class, several of them scored above 900 -- high enough to get into college. James Tucker, the league MVP, enrolled at Central and became the school's starting point guard. Some younger guys who had dropped out of high school enrolled in a charter school. Others found jobs through the corporate sponsors.

Jordan Wright, 25, gave up selling drugs and landed a job at a local bank, a change that he says he couldn't have made without his mentor and number-one job reference, Jimmy Black. "In the beginning, I was like, 'Jimmy, this is a lot harder,' " Wright says of the long hours and the low pay as a temp worker. "And he said, 'Stick with it. Things will get better.' " They have. Wright found a better job at a local hospital and married his girlfriend last year. The couple recently had their first child. "I'm growing up. I have more responsibility," Wright says. "I'm waiting for a time when I can be there for Jimmy, the way he was there for me."

For now, though, Nightflight is on hiatus. Johnson, for all his powers of persuasion, was unable to convince the local police or the YMCA that they should provide the security and the facilities either free or at a sizable discount. Undaunted, he's looking at other venues in the Triangle area for Nightflight as well as for another new idea of his: a "soft-skills" course for inmates about to be released, which would boost their chances of finding work.

Because Johnson sees opportunity in nearly everything he touches, he's a busy man. He's working on a multitude of outreach projects along with teaching classes, serving on a half-dozen boards, writing new grant proposals, articles, or books, and coediting three academic journals. He's a geography professor all right: He's all over the map. No wonder he's usually the first one in the office and the last one to leave.

Rather than trying to inhibit or restrict all of that energy, the Kenan Institute's Kasarda, who hired Johnson away from UCLA, gives him free rein. He's a rarity, says Kasarda, "an institutional entrepreneur -- probably the best investment I've made in my life." Despite the inherent barriers of working within a large institution, Johnson manages to create small, nimble organizations, then marries the resources of the university with those of businesses.

At the heart of his social-justice work is his faith in civic entrepreneurship. Johnson focuses on helping underserved entrepreneurs become better entrepreneurs and on helping such organizations as cash-strapped nonprofits and state agencies operate more like businesses. Both groups form the building blocks of his bridges. As businesses become more competitive, the communities where they reside become more competitive.

Through its six-week civic-entrepreneurship workshop, the Urban Enterprise Corps has trained more than 50 nonprofits over the past two years. Another workshop teaches women and minority entrepreneurs how to export their products so that they can participate in the global marketplace. Last spring, by the time the class ended, two of the companies had already sold a total of $33,000 in cleaning supplies to customers in Korea.