Friday is tie day for Black males in this South Jersey mentoring group

School counselor Darrell Edmonds was preparing a male student for a job interview several years ago and asked a question: What do you plan to wear? The answer surprised him.

“I don’t have a tie,” the young man responded honestly. Neither did he know how to tie one.

Edmonds, then the director of the AtlantiCare teen center at Oakcrest High School in Mays Landing, unknotted his own tie and taught him how to tie it. The young man returned a short time later with two friends. Word quickly spread and soon others followed. Edmonds brought more ties from home.

What started as a simple lesson spawned an outreach program, “Friday Is Tie Day,” and a growing movement led by Edmonds to mentor young Black males in South Jersey. More than 200 have passed through the program since it was launched in 2013 and Edmonds hopes to add more chapters.

“This is my passion work,” said Edmonds, 41, of Mays Landing. “I don’t believe there is enough attention given to Black males in our schools.”

The program began with seven youngsters, most from Oakcrest High. Edmonds designated Fridays as “tie day” to encourage them to be gentlemen. The mission, however, was bigger than donning a tie. It was about empowering young men for life after high school. By the end of the school year, enrollment jumped to 30 teenagers.

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The young men said wearing a tie even on Friday, typically a casual day at school, boosted their confidence and helped dispel stereotypes about Black men. Edmonds — a community leader, a former church youth music director, and a former college football player — made them feel cool about dressing up.

“You become OK being different,” said Danté Moore, who was a freshman at Egg Harbor Township High School when he joined the group. “People would come up to me and comment on my tie. I liked when people saw that version of me. I loved that feeling.”

Moore, 23, returned to the group in 2020 as a volunteer after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. An electrical engineer at the FAA William Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, he runs the robotics program and teaches coding. The young men are encouraged to explore STEM careers.

“We are really trying to set these kids up for the future,” Moore said. “We want to give them a leg up on life.”

Before the pandemic, the group met monthly on Sundays, and attended SAT workshops and training and completed service projects. They went on college tours and developed a mobile app to help their peers navigate campus visits. They also have mentors, men from the community recruited by Edmonds to serve as role models and father figures for some. At a ceremony in May, the seniors will announce their college plans at “Decision Day.” Each will get a custom-designed tie.

Edmonds said the nonprofit group boasts a 100% college acceptance rate, although not all have enrolled in a four-year institution. Some have opted for trade or vocational school, he said. About 50 young men in grades 8 to 12 from Atlantic, Camden, and Gloucester Counties are in the program, he said.

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“It’s important to see someone who looks like and helps you along the process,” said Xavier Alexander, 17, a senior at Williamstown High School who wants to major in sports medicine at Howard University. “The world we live in today doesn’t love us,” added Alexander, whose brother, Ethan, 14, is also in the group.

The group heard firsthand last week from a panel of Black doctors during a discussion sponsored by AtlantiCare to increase awareness about the need for more Black men in the health field. Among the speakers was Blair Bergen, an OB/GYN who has delivered 14,000 babies in three decades. They also watched a special screening of the documentary Black Men in White Coats.

“You cannot be what you cannot see,” Charisse Fizer, vice president of clinical services and chief diversity equity and inclusion officer at AtlantiCare, told the group during a virtual discussion.

The documentary was the brainchild of Dale Okorodudu, a pulmonary care specialist in Dallas who founded the Black Men in White Coats organization to increase awareness about the need for more Black men in medicine. It chronicles the journey of Black men to pursue their dreams to become doctors.

Less than 2% of doctors in the United States are Black men, statistics show. With enrollment dropping for Black men from 3.1% of those entering medical school in 1978 to 2.9% in 2019, Okorodudu wants to boost their ranks in the field through mentoring, inspiration, and exposure.

During the discussion, Sh’Rae Marshall, a fourth-year medical student at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University, identified with the young men. Edmonds was a mentor while Marshall was a middle-school student at the Uptown Complex in Atlantic City before forming Friday Is Tie Day.

“I am them,” said Marshall, 30. “You aren’t limited by your capacity.”

Cliff “C.J.” Hamler, 18, of Mays Landing, a senior at Oak Crest and aspiring clinical psychologist, said he was captivated by the discussion “just because of the fact that it was Black doctors.” His mother is a nurse-practitioner.

“It’s really like a family. It’s very inspiring,” Hamler said.

Edmonds, the father of three daughters, said he wanted to share life lessons with the group that he learned from his late father, Jesse, and other men while growing up in Egg Harbor City. He also is the executive director of Give Something Back in Princeton, a nonprofit that provides scholarships and mentoring for students who have faced economic hardships such as homelessness.

“He’s a great mentor,” said Alexander. “It’s only fair to show him the proper respect by being great.”