FOUNDERS/VISIONARIES
Our History, Our Legacy
Memorials are created to keep remembrances alive! They are the acts of men and women who want us to recall a particular time, place or person. Often they are established so that people can recollect how another person’s life has affected their own.
The Randolph Evans Memorial Scholarship is a very special memorial. For not only does it attempt to make us recollect another person’s life, but it also challenges us to remember how a tragic loss of life and the concurrent heroic struggle for justice that followed has affected us all.
In 1976, Randolph Evans, a fifteen year old Black youth, was shot and killed for no apparent reason by a police officer. His death came on the heels of similar deaths of Black youth in New York City; and like the other deaths, the tragic loss of youthful life and its contested injustice was nearly swept under the rug. After exhausting numerous attempts to get a fair hearing of the case in the courts, the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, along with Jitu Weusi, Sam Pinn, Jr., Assemblyman Al Vann, and Mrs. Annie Evans-Brannon, the mother of the late Randolph Evans, developed a strategy of protest and boycott of certain stores in downtown Brooklyn business area to draw city-wide attention, and to enlist the public support of the downtown Brooklyn business men in the demand for justice for Randy Evans. Under the banner of brutality and a comprehensive solution to some of the problems that face oppressed communities in Brooklyn.