Bible, Breakfast Start the School Day at D.C.'s Ballou

'Wire' Actor Talks With Prayer Club

At a time when home is not always a sanctuary and the streets are claiming so many of their peers, students have formed a prayer club at Ballou Senior High School, where they come together before the bell rings for breakfast and help from above.

"When you wake in the morning and are mad and you are upset, you can come in and have some Gospel and some prayer, and have a happy day," said LaShell Frye, 17, an honors student who took part in the first gathering of the group last month.

Ron "Mo" Moten, founder of the Peaceoholics, helped the students at Ballou organize the first prayer breakfast. Although Moten's group was founded to help young people identify positive alternatives to the streets, the event was even more special because his son is a sophomore at the school.

"The children need an environment to express their problems, but in a way that they will accept it," Moten said. "The entire event was organized by the students and run by the students, and that is why the prayer club has been successful."

During the breakfast, the students heard from the Rev. Tony Lee, pastor of the Community of Hope AME Church in Temple Hills, and Anwan Glover, an actor on "The Wire" and a radio personality on WKYS-FM.

Glover, a former gang member who has been shot multiple times, said: "We have to have things like this not just on holidays, but weekly, to keep young people talking about violence and peer pressure. A lot of these kids don't have guidance; they don't have anyone to tell them what is good."

The prayer breakfast took place during the same week that 15-year-old Guillermo Medina, a New Carrollton youth, was fatally stabbed as he walked home from Parkdale High School in Riverdale.

"This was a little guy they said who was trying to get out of the gang, but the gang came to him," said Glover, who works with the Peaceoholics. "We are tired of the RIP T-shirts, the teddy bears lined up, the candlelight vigils. We are tired of it. It is horrible."

Moten, who said he hopes prayer clubs can be started at other D.C. public schools, said the students are doing what activists did during the civil rights movement.

"Prayer was a key thing during the civil rights movement in the '60s," said Moten, adding that the second prayer breakfast, held this month, featured the Rev. Gwendolyn C. Webb, who was a child protester during the Children's March in Birmingham, Ala.

On May 8, some of the Ballou students traveled with other students from the District to Birmingham to reenact the May 1963 Children's March, in which the youth marched from the 16th Street Baptist Church toward City Hall. Four girls were killed in a bombing at the church later that year. The 1963 march was halted by police with fire hoses and dogs, but the students completed the journey this time.

Ballou Principal Karen Smith said the students can have a prayer club in the school as long as it ends before the bell rings. During the first breakfast, Smith was all smiles, but she kept tabs on the clock.

"My hope is that the students will think that this is an opportunity to come together and focus on something positive as the beginning of their school day," Smith said. "This kind of sets the tone for the school day."