A three-part series on the fate of 59 fifth-graders who were given an extraordinary gift: the promise of a college education paid for by two wealthy businessmen.
Video: Wondering what happened to the rest of the class? Meet all the students and find out who made it through high school, trade school and college with our interactive database. Watch video interviews with Jeffery Norris, Ponloeu Le, Tiffany Alston and other students to hear first-hand how the program impacted lives.
Everyone was going inside the church that morning — his mother, his older sister, a stream of friends, relatives and basketball buddies, all of them holding one another and sobbing.
Darone Robinson, 12, refused to get out of his mother’s blue Pontiac Grand Prix. He could not bring himself to walk into that church and see the casket that held the remains of Carlos Yates, his 27-year-old cousin.
Meet the characters
Darone Robinson
An indifferent student and enthusiastic brawler for many years. Pushed constantly by his mother.
William Smith
The adored class prankster whose life was defined by a burst of violence that left him in a wheelchair.
Jeffery Norris
Witnessed his uncle being beaten to death with a baseball bat at 8 and swore he would never be a victim.
Tiffany Alston
A strong student whose mother vowed to scrub floors so her daughter could become a lawyer.
Terrell Jackson
Survived two shootings by age 15. Fantasized about playing basketball for the Bullets.
Rose Johnson
Struggled to support two children as a receptionist and worried constantly about her son Darone Robinson’s safety.
Abe Pollin
Owner of the Washington Bullets who promised college scholarships to the Seat Pleasant 59.
Melvin Cohen
Owner of District Photo, who partnered with Abe Pollin in adopting the Seat Pleasant 59.
For as long as Darone could remember, Carlos had been a basketball god, a record-breaking scorer at George Mason University once seemingly destined for the NBA. When Darone visited Carlos’s family in Reston on weekends, his cousin took him to shoot hoops. Carlos talked about the importance of hard work and education, echoing the message Darone was hearing from two wealthy businessmen who had promised college scholarships to his class at Seat Pleasant Elementary.
For Darone, who had no relationship with his father, Carlos was the next best thing.
Then, on a Sunday in August 1989, as Darone and his mother, Rose Johnson, arrived at their modest brick house in Capitol Heights, his older sister met them at the front door. She was weeping.
Carlos has been shot, she cried. Carlos has been killed.
Darone wouldn’t learn until much later that Carlos had been killed in a drug-related shooting or that he’d been charged in Baltimore with conspiracy to distribute cocaine. His mother didn’t want him to know what the police were saying.
For weeks after the funeral, Darone dialed his cousin’s phone number, hoping, somehow, that Carlos would answer. All he got was a recording of his cousin’s voice.
Pick up the phone, Darone thought. Come on, Carlos.
Finally, he stopped calling.
In the halls of Hyattsville Middle School, where they enrolled that fall, Darone Robinson and his classmates still existed in an exalted bubble. They were the Dreamers, the kids adopted by Washington Bullets owner Abe Pollin and his friend Melvin Cohen for an ambitious social experiment, one that had made the students symbols of hope in their neighborhoods and beyond.
Yet, when they left school at 3:15 p.m. every day, when they weren’t lunching with Pollin and Cohen, when they weren’t traveling on their exclusive school bus, the Dreamers returned to communities rife with drugs and gang-related carnage. They went home to mothers, many of them raising families on their own, who were terrified that their children would end up dead or be drawn into gangs or the drug trade.
Already, the giddy promise of that day in 1988, when Pollin and Cohen announced the scholarships, had given way to a more sober sense of what was possible.
Tracy Proctor had been hired by the philanthropists to work with the children every day as the project coordinator, but the role demanded much more. At 25, he was a surrogate father, social worker, fixer, tutor, bouncer, parole officer and chauffeur. Proctor was mentoring 59 Dreamers, and trying to ensure their success was daunting.
Pollin and Cohen had invested $325,000 in the class and would end up spending far more than that on transportation, tutors, field trips and camps. Both men were accustomed to getting returns on their investments, and what they were seeing from the Seat Pleasant 59 wasn’t enough. They became impatient when they learned of low grades and chronic absences. They would ask: Why are we spending so much money if the kids aren’t showing up?
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