November 28, 2023 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Ian Rowe took full responsibility for what he believed was right. He sized up the assumption that his public school becoming all black in one year would make it worse - and committed 100% to staying there to make it the very best.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people up next to story from our True Diversity series
sponsored by the Great Folks at the Philanthropy Roundtable, America's
leading advocate for you to support the causes you believe in.
Today we meet a partner of their campaign, Ian Rowe,
(00:32):
founder of Vertex Partnership Academies. Let's get into the story.
Take it away, Ian.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
My parents are from Jamaica, West Indies. They met in
the mid nineteen sixties in England and my mom took
a liking to this guy, Vincent. My mom's name is Ula,
and he was working on a sugar plantation. He was
an accountant there. He's very smart, and they started dating
(01:06):
when they were both very young. She was eighteen, he
was just a couple of years older. And you know,
this was in Jamaica. So he used to pick her
up for their dates on orseback. So they had these
magical dates and they fell in love with each other.
(01:29):
And at the time, Jamaica was still in English Commonwealth,
and so my dad felt that he had reached kind
of the apex of what he could learn in Jamaica,
so he had an opportunity to go to England to
finish his schooling. So he went to England and after
being there a few months, he missed his buds as
(01:51):
what they called each other buds. And at the time,
the British government required that if you wanted to marry
a young woman under twenty one, you had to write
a letter to the young woman's parents asking toward her
hand in marriage. And so my you know, Vincent wrote
(02:13):
the letter of a lifetime asking for her hand in marriage.
It was much consternation in the cid Wright household because
she was nineteen at the time. So she got to
leave to go meet this man all the way at England.
And after much the servant her parents decided yes. And
(02:35):
so my mom, at nineteen years old in the mid
nineteen fifties, you know, a young black woman took a
boat all by herself about a five thousand mile journey
to England to meet up with my dad and they
got married. About a year later they had my brother,
and then seven years later they had me. So both
(02:58):
my brother and I were born in a England in London,
and that's why we were born there. You know, they
ultimately came to the United States. My dad became one
of the early black engineers at IBM, and my mom
started working for Manufacturers Hanover, which some of your listeners
may not know, but it was a big bank at
the time. It ultimately, Manufacturers Hanover better known as Banny
(03:21):
Hannie became Chemical Bank, which then became Chase, which is
now JP Morgan Chase. So that's how our journey started.
That's why I was born in London because it was
a dream and in some ways, for my mom, that
moment when her parents said yes to this huge decision,
(03:46):
I think, and I'll talk a little bit about my
own sort of coming of agency moment, I think that's
what she experienced, this moment where she felt she had
a lot of skin in the game. She played a
role in her own own destiny, and she was advocating
to her parents to be able to go to England
at nineteen all by herself, something that wasn't done, but
(04:10):
she knew that it was right. And it's a lesson
I learned from my mom and my dad as well.
Every young person is going to face multiple moments in
their life when the future is unknown, where you're facing
a huge decision that you don't know the outcome, and
yet after you've mold the decision, after you've mold all
(04:32):
the factors, then you commit. You commit. That's a part
of agency that you take ownership of decisions in such
a way that you know you are leading a self
determined life. You're responsible for your behavior, for your attitude.
(04:54):
That's ultimately what agency is all about. And I think
for my mom, having that first big yet many years ago,
initiated a cascade of decisions that she and then she
and my dad made which essentially and ultimately in order
to the benefit of them as well as their own family.
(05:18):
My parents were married, so forty eight years. When my
parents first came to the United States. It was nineteen
sixty eight ninet sixty nine, obviously a very tumultuous time
in our nation's history, a lot of racial tension. There
(05:39):
were riots in the streets. But they were very cognizant
of what was going on in the country. They were
raised in a predominantly black country, so the role of
race was far diminished. I remember my dad always used
to say, you know what he was in Jamaica, he
was a man. He was a man in Jamaica, I'm
(06:00):
a man. It wasn't until he got a United States
that he learned he was a black man, and that
had meaning to him because in Jamaica, your skin color
wasn't the first thing that defined you, would define you
as much more your actions, your attitude, your ambition. But
in the United States he felt that, based on these
(06:22):
external forces, you were a black man first, and he
fought against that. You know, I only said, well, that's crazy,
you know. Yet they also recognized that the country was changing,
you know, the Civil Rights Act had just been signed,
the Voting Rights at signed. You know, opportunity was opening up.
(06:46):
So in some ways they weren't running from Jamaica. They
were running to the United States in search of a
veteral life. And so they and still they knee certainly
this idea that your efforts and your character and what
(07:08):
you did matters far more than this singular characteristics.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
When we come back more of Ian Rose's story our
True Diversity series with the Philanthropy Roundtable here on Our
American Stories lie hbib Here again, Our American Stories tries
to tell the stories of America's past and present to Americans,
(07:36):
and we want to hear your stories too. There's some
of our favorites. Fend them to us. Go to Ouramericanstories
dot com and click the your stories tab. Again, please
go to Alamericanstories dot com and click the your stories tab.
(08:09):
And we returned to our American Stories and with Ian
Rose story as a part of our True Diversity series
with Philanthropy Roundtable. When we last left off, Ian was
telling us about a pivotal moment in his mother's life,
that being when she decided to move to England as
a teenager to marry his father. Let's continue with the
story here again is Ian Rowe.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
No matter what chaos may have been happening in the world,
my parents were there. We first came to Brooklyn on
Wyona Street, and you know, we had a very humble home.
We were in our two family house. And what was
(08:55):
interesting about that time was my parents, frankly, we're not
that happy with what they saw how young black men
were operating their lives. They thought they were two loose
and they were concerned, especially given the larger contexts of
all the issues facing the nation. And so in Brooklyn
(09:18):
when we first got there, I was kind of on lockdown.
All of my education kindergartens through twelfth graders in public education,
so ky to twelve public schools. But from kindergarten, you know,
I went to school in the morning, came home immediately,
did my homework, We had dinner as a family, went
to bed, woke up, went to school, came home directly,
(09:43):
did my homework, had dinner, went to bed early. And
so my experience growing up were very contained. It was
very contained. My parents placed a huge value on being
together as a family. They placed a huge value on say,
placed a huge value on education. I did love school. Well,
(10:07):
let's put this way. I both loved school and knew
that I didn't have any other option but to love school.
You know, my parents they placed a very high premium
on education. You know, they came to the United States
during an era of severe racial tension, and they knew
(10:30):
that if you were going to succeed in this country,
the opportunities were there, but you have to be prepared
once those opportunities come your way. And so that was
really my early life. My parents would do anything for
us if they thought it would mean a better life
(10:51):
and capitalizing on what they believed in America had to offer.
And so in nineteen seventy three, after we had been
in Brooklyn for few years, my parents moved on up Aks.
You remember the Jefferson's comedy to Come. We moved on
to Queens. We moved to a small town, Laurelton, Queens,
(11:14):
into a community that had been predominantly white Italian Jewish,
but was slowly becoming more racially integrated as more black people,
in particular were moving into Laurelton. And unfortunately that since
slow integration led to a lot of racial tension in Laurelton,
(11:34):
and my junior high school, Junior High School two thirty
one had become the epicenter, and the school board decided
to solve this problem by saying, you know what, we're
basically just going to putt We're going to create a
new school, an annex in Rosedale, Queens, which was another
(11:57):
town a few miles over in a more permanently predominantly
white part of town. And essentially what happened was all
of the white parents that were going to my Junior
High School two thirty one in Laurelton decided to take
their kids out and send their kids to this annex
(12:18):
Junior High School in Rosedale, leading Junior High School two
thirty one as a segregated, virtually all black school, and
my parents on the assumption that where the white kids go,
that's where the better education will be. You know, that's
what my Jamaican parents would come to this country in
(12:39):
search of the American dream. That's what they presumed. And
so therefore they said to me they were going to
take me out of two thirty one and send me
to this other school. And I'll always remember Sunday night,
(13:00):
were the transfer papers were supposed to be submitted. I
begged my parents. You know, my parents would crawl through
broken glass for me and my brother, you know, if
they felt they would be good by us. And so
there are a lot of things that they decided that
I may not have understood in the moment. But if
I gave my parents the supreme benefit of the doubt
(13:20):
in every decision, but something about this decision didn't feel right.
I loved my school, I loved my teachers, and even
this very idea just because now all the white kids
are gone, somehow it has to be worse. Why why
why Just because now that everyone's black, that just inherently
(13:41):
means that it's bad and so something welled up in me,
particularly that Sunday night that never had welld up before,
and I begged my parents. I cried, I faded. Please
let me stay, Please let me stay. You know, I'll
work hard, I'll I'll do more chores, whatever it is like,
I'll do it. I commit, you know, I will, I'll
(14:03):
work really art. Please let me stay. And ultimately my
parents relented. You know, I look back now and I
wonder if in that moment, you know, because my dad
was in his regular recliner in the living room and
my mom was on the couch in the same positions
that we always had big conversations as the family. But
(14:27):
I always wonder, in that moment, even for my mom,
did she think back to the moment when she was
in Jamaica as a nineteen year old girl with this
letter in the hands of her parents, making this huge decision,
and she's asking them to go. I want to go.
(14:48):
If it'll be it'll work out. I love him, I'm
ready to go, and they said yes. I always wonder
if that experience parallels to when I was begging for
the opportunity now at twelve years old, to stay in
my junior high school and you know, I like to
think yes. I like to think yes because I feel
(15:09):
like that was her first coming of agency moment where
she felt she knew that she could play a role
in her own destiny. And I felt, at twelve years old,
after my parents said yes, that I had skin in
the game now in a way that I never had beflore.
I wouldn't have said it then, but I certainly feel
(15:30):
it now. That was the first moment that I experienced agency,
that I was a force in my own future, that
I had the ability to shape my destiny, and really
that that was a turning point in my life. And
I'm convinced that every big decision I've made going forward,
(15:51):
particularly as it relates to anything related to my leadership
in schools, is asking the basic question, why should it
matter what the demographic make up biz of a particular institution?
Who cared? What matters is the expectation or asking young
people to do? What is the metric for excellent? Are
(16:13):
we holding everyone to high standards? That's what matters? And
I'm convinced that the reason I run schools today is
connected back to that moment when I beg my parents
saying who cares? That all the white kids are gone.
I mean I had friends who are white, and so
it wasn't so much that it was this presumption that
(16:35):
just being all black meant it had to be less than.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
And I never want anyone of any ways, any background
to feel just because they're kids of a certain background
in their school or institution, somehow it.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Is less than. So that's part of my story back
then that I think has a huge impact on me today.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And a terrific job on the editing, production and storytelling
by our own Montae Montgomery, and a special thanks to
Ian Rowe, founder of Vertex Partnership Academies, and also a
special thanks to our sponsor at the Philanthropy Roundtable. Their
True Diversity Initiative encourages Americans to embrace all the qualities
that make us unique individuals, because there's so much more
(17:24):
to each of our stories than what's defined by a
group identity or other superficial traits. And my goodness, what
a story he told about the segregation of the schools
even in Queens, white parents pulling out, and his parents
wanting him to follow those white kids, and him having
his coming of agency moment where he said no, a
(17:46):
terrific story about so many things, including taking control of
your own life. Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people up next to story from our True Diversity series
sponsored by the Great Folks at the Philanthropy Roundtable, America's
leading advocate for you to support the causes you believe in.
Today we meet a partner of their campaign, Ian Rowe,
(00:32):
founder of Vertex Partnership Academies. Let's get into the story.
Take it away, Ian.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
My parents are from Jamaica, West Indies. They met in
the mid nineteen sixties in England and my mom took
a liking to this guy, Vincent. My mom's name is Ula,
and he was working on a sugar plantation. He was
an accountant there. He's very smart, and they started dating
(01:06):
when they were both very young. She was eighteen, he
was just a couple of years older. And you know,
this was in Jamaica. So he used to pick her
up for their dates on orseback. So they had these
magical dates and they fell in love with each other.
(01:29):
And at the time, Jamaica was still in English Commonwealth,
and so my dad felt that he had reached kind
of the apex of what he could learn in Jamaica,
so he had an opportunity to go to England to
finish his schooling. So he went to England and after
being there a few months, he missed his buds as
(01:51):
what they called each other buds. And at the time,
the British government required that if you wanted to marry
a young woman under twenty one, you had to write
a letter to the young woman's parents asking toward her
hand in marriage. And so my you know, Vincent wrote
(02:13):
the letter of a lifetime asking for her hand in marriage.
It was much consternation in the cid Wright household because
she was nineteen at the time. So she got to
leave to go meet this man all the way at England.
And after much the servant her parents decided yes. And
(02:35):
so my mom, at nineteen years old in the mid
nineteen fifties, you know, a young black woman took a
boat all by herself about a five thousand mile journey
to England to meet up with my dad and they
got married. About a year later they had my brother,
and then seven years later they had me. So both
(02:58):
my brother and I were born in a England in London,
and that's why we were born there. You know, they
ultimately came to the United States. My dad became one
of the early black engineers at IBM, and my mom
started working for Manufacturers Hanover, which some of your listeners
may not know, but it was a big bank at
the time. It ultimately, Manufacturers Hanover better known as Banny
(03:21):
Hannie became Chemical Bank, which then became Chase, which is
now JP Morgan Chase. So that's how our journey started.
That's why I was born in London because it was
a dream and in some ways, for my mom, that
moment when her parents said yes to this huge decision,
(03:46):
I think, and I'll talk a little bit about my
own sort of coming of agency moment, I think that's
what she experienced, this moment where she felt she had
a lot of skin in the game. She played a
role in her own own destiny, and she was advocating
to her parents to be able to go to England
at nineteen all by herself, something that wasn't done, but
(04:10):
she knew that it was right. And it's a lesson
I learned from my mom and my dad as well.
Every young person is going to face multiple moments in
their life when the future is unknown, where you're facing
a huge decision that you don't know the outcome, and
yet after you've mold the decision, after you've mold all
(04:32):
the factors, then you commit. You commit. That's a part
of agency that you take ownership of decisions in such
a way that you know you are leading a self
determined life. You're responsible for your behavior, for your attitude.
(04:54):
That's ultimately what agency is all about. And I think
for my mom, having that first big yet many years ago,
initiated a cascade of decisions that she and then she
and my dad made which essentially and ultimately in order
to the benefit of them as well as their own family.
(05:18):
My parents were married, so forty eight years. When my
parents first came to the United States. It was nineteen
sixty eight ninet sixty nine, obviously a very tumultuous time
in our nation's history, a lot of racial tension. There
(05:39):
were riots in the streets. But they were very cognizant
of what was going on in the country. They were
raised in a predominantly black country, so the role of
race was far diminished. I remember my dad always used
to say, you know what he was in Jamaica, he
was a man. He was a man in Jamaica, I'm
(06:00):
a man. It wasn't until he got a United States
that he learned he was a black man, and that
had meaning to him because in Jamaica, your skin color
wasn't the first thing that defined you, would define you
as much more your actions, your attitude, your ambition. But
in the United States he felt that, based on these
(06:22):
external forces, you were a black man first, and he
fought against that. You know, I only said, well, that's crazy,
you know. Yet they also recognized that the country was changing,
you know, the Civil Rights Act had just been signed,
the Voting Rights at signed. You know, opportunity was opening up.
(06:46):
So in some ways they weren't running from Jamaica. They
were running to the United States in search of a
veteral life. And so they and still they knee certainly
this idea that your efforts and your character and what
(07:08):
you did matters far more than this singular characteristics.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
When we come back more of Ian Rose's story our
True Diversity series with the Philanthropy Roundtable here on Our
American Stories lie hbib Here again, Our American Stories tries
to tell the stories of America's past and present to Americans,
(07:36):
and we want to hear your stories too. There's some
of our favorites. Fend them to us. Go to Ouramericanstories
dot com and click the your stories tab. Again, please
go to Alamericanstories dot com and click the your stories tab.
(08:09):
And we returned to our American Stories and with Ian
Rose story as a part of our True Diversity series
with Philanthropy Roundtable. When we last left off, Ian was
telling us about a pivotal moment in his mother's life,
that being when she decided to move to England as
a teenager to marry his father. Let's continue with the
story here again is Ian Rowe.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
No matter what chaos may have been happening in the world,
my parents were there. We first came to Brooklyn on
Wyona Street, and you know, we had a very humble home.
We were in our two family house. And what was
(08:55):
interesting about that time was my parents, frankly, we're not
that happy with what they saw how young black men
were operating their lives. They thought they were two loose
and they were concerned, especially given the larger contexts of
all the issues facing the nation. And so in Brooklyn
(09:18):
when we first got there, I was kind of on lockdown.
All of my education kindergartens through twelfth graders in public education,
so ky to twelve public schools. But from kindergarten, you know,
I went to school in the morning, came home immediately,
did my homework, We had dinner as a family, went
to bed, woke up, went to school, came home directly,
(09:43):
did my homework, had dinner, went to bed early. And
so my experience growing up were very contained. It was
very contained. My parents placed a huge value on being
together as a family. They placed a huge value on say,
placed a huge value on education. I did love school. Well,
(10:07):
let's put this way. I both loved school and knew
that I didn't have any other option but to love school.
You know, my parents they placed a very high premium
on education. You know, they came to the United States
during an era of severe racial tension, and they knew
(10:30):
that if you were going to succeed in this country,
the opportunities were there, but you have to be prepared
once those opportunities come your way. And so that was
really my early life. My parents would do anything for
us if they thought it would mean a better life
(10:51):
and capitalizing on what they believed in America had to offer.
And so in nineteen seventy three, after we had been
in Brooklyn for few years, my parents moved on up Aks.
You remember the Jefferson's comedy to Come. We moved on
to Queens. We moved to a small town, Laurelton, Queens,
(11:14):
into a community that had been predominantly white Italian Jewish,
but was slowly becoming more racially integrated as more black people,
in particular were moving into Laurelton. And unfortunately that since
slow integration led to a lot of racial tension in Laurelton,
(11:34):
and my junior high school, Junior High School two thirty
one had become the epicenter, and the school board decided
to solve this problem by saying, you know what, we're
basically just going to putt We're going to create a
new school, an annex in Rosedale, Queens, which was another
(11:57):
town a few miles over in a more permanently predominantly
white part of town. And essentially what happened was all
of the white parents that were going to my Junior
High School two thirty one in Laurelton decided to take
their kids out and send their kids to this annex
(12:18):
Junior High School in Rosedale, leading Junior High School two
thirty one as a segregated, virtually all black school, and
my parents on the assumption that where the white kids go,
that's where the better education will be. You know, that's
what my Jamaican parents would come to this country in
(12:39):
search of the American dream. That's what they presumed. And
so therefore they said to me they were going to
take me out of two thirty one and send me
to this other school. And I'll always remember Sunday night,
(13:00):
were the transfer papers were supposed to be submitted. I
begged my parents. You know, my parents would crawl through
broken glass for me and my brother, you know, if
they felt they would be good by us. And so
there are a lot of things that they decided that
I may not have understood in the moment. But if
I gave my parents the supreme benefit of the doubt
(13:20):
in every decision, but something about this decision didn't feel right.
I loved my school, I loved my teachers, and even
this very idea just because now all the white kids
are gone, somehow it has to be worse. Why why
why Just because now that everyone's black, that just inherently
(13:41):
means that it's bad and so something welled up in me,
particularly that Sunday night that never had welld up before,
and I begged my parents. I cried, I faded. Please
let me stay, Please let me stay. You know, I'll
work hard, I'll I'll do more chores, whatever it is like,
I'll do it. I commit, you know, I will, I'll
(14:03):
work really art. Please let me stay. And ultimately my
parents relented. You know, I look back now and I
wonder if in that moment, you know, because my dad
was in his regular recliner in the living room and
my mom was on the couch in the same positions
that we always had big conversations as the family. But
(14:27):
I always wonder, in that moment, even for my mom,
did she think back to the moment when she was
in Jamaica as a nineteen year old girl with this
letter in the hands of her parents, making this huge decision,
and she's asking them to go. I want to go.
(14:48):
If it'll be it'll work out. I love him, I'm
ready to go, and they said yes. I always wonder
if that experience parallels to when I was begging for
the opportunity now at twelve years old, to stay in
my junior high school and you know, I like to
think yes. I like to think yes because I feel
(15:09):
like that was her first coming of agency moment where
she felt she knew that she could play a role
in her own destiny. And I felt, at twelve years old,
after my parents said yes, that I had skin in
the game now in a way that I never had beflore.
I wouldn't have said it then, but I certainly feel
(15:30):
it now. That was the first moment that I experienced agency,
that I was a force in my own future, that
I had the ability to shape my destiny, and really
that that was a turning point in my life. And
I'm convinced that every big decision I've made going forward,
(15:51):
particularly as it relates to anything related to my leadership
in schools, is asking the basic question, why should it
matter what the demographic make up biz of a particular institution?
Who cared? What matters is the expectation or asking young
people to do? What is the metric for excellent? Are
(16:13):
we holding everyone to high standards? That's what matters? And
I'm convinced that the reason I run schools today is
connected back to that moment when I beg my parents
saying who cares? That all the white kids are gone.
I mean I had friends who are white, and so
it wasn't so much that it was this presumption that
(16:35):
just being all black meant it had to be less than.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
And I never want anyone of any ways, any background
to feel just because they're kids of a certain background
in their school or institution, somehow it.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Is less than. So that's part of my story back
then that I think has a huge impact on me today.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And a terrific job on the editing, production and storytelling
by our own Montae Montgomery, and a special thanks to
Ian Rowe, founder of Vertex Partnership Academies, and also a
special thanks to our sponsor at the Philanthropy Roundtable. Their
True Diversity Initiative encourages Americans to embrace all the qualities
that make us unique individuals, because there's so much more
(17:24):
to each of our stories than what's defined by a
group identity or other superficial traits. And my goodness, what
a story he told about the segregation of the schools
even in Queens, white parents pulling out, and his parents
wanting him to follow those white kids, and him having
his coming of agency moment where he said no, a
(17:46):
terrific story about so many things, including taking control of
your own life. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!