July 8, 2026 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, born to a teenage mother in one of Jacksonville's toughest neighborhoods, Denisha Allen spent much of her childhood moving between homes, failing in school, and believing she had no future. By the fifth grade, she had repeated third grade twice and was on the path toward becoming another dropout.
Then a remarkable godmother, a scholarship to a small Christian school, and a handful of teachers who refused to give up on her changed everything. Today, Denisha works to help other at-risk children find the same opportunities that transformed her life. It's a powerful story about the life-changing impact of love, education, and adults who choose to invest in a child.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next the
story of Danishia Allen, a senior fellow at the American
Federation for Children. Let's get into the story. Here's Denisha.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
All growing up.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I remember being a little kid and seeing vibrants and
hearing stories of how the community was excited and people
were engaged and they knew one another. The east side
of Jacksonville where I grew up, it's called the Urban Corus.
Sits right along the Saint John's where the Jacksonville Jaguars play,
(00:51):
so very close to where city life is. The baseball
stadium is maybe like a couple blocks from there, and
I remember or we would go to the to the
football games. We would go to the back baseball games,
not that we could afford it, but like community members
would pass out stuff, there will be cookouts. People knew
(01:12):
each other by name. It was a place where community
members really thrived. My godmother, she would tell me stories like, oh, yeah,
uncle Cox, he used to have a barber shop right here.
Uh yeah, this place right here, which n Looking at
the buildings, you would never think that it was a
business of any sort because it was just an abandoned building.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
But there was this.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
This culture, and all of a sudden that stuff stopped.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
For top story tonight, that deadly shooting on the East
Side area, nightclubs and bars are where law enforcement is
finding a younger generation of people in possession of a
new drug called n nd I meta pensylon hydrochloride.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
People stopped having those cookouts.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Drug and alcohol abuse started to increase, and more people,
instead of going to work, were just walking around the
neighborhood aimlessly looking for where they can I guess, get
their next hit. Gang violence increased, and my family was, uh,
I'm assuming a part of that. I would walk around
the neighborhood and people wouldn't know me, you know, they
(02:25):
would say, oh, that's such and such a little daughter.
You don't mess with the Merriweathers. They're gonna get you.
I wore my last name Merriwether as a badge of
honor because everybody knew who I was. Everybody knew my family,
and I didn't think it was you know, I thought
it was great, but unfortunately it also followed me other
places that followed me into like the after school program.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
It followed me into school.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
People knew the Merriweathers and not in a good way.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
How I grew up.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
You don't aks adults questions, y, You just say okay,
you know, like you don't ask some questions. If things
are happening, you just you know, you you just go
along with what's happening. So I never really asked too
many questions about what was happening around me. I just
(03:18):
observed a lot of things and put my head down
and say, yes, ma'am. So my biological dad, I didn't
ask a lot of questions about him. But supposedly the
dad that I grew up with was not my biological father.
I heard stories about how she just went to problem
(03:42):
with this nice young man. He was so nice and
now here you are. And I was just like always
intrigued about this story because I never heard much about it.
But supposedly, at one moment his name was Ernest, then
at another moment his name was Dennis.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So I I I my biological dad.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Up until even today, I'm still very cloudy and blurry.
I'm not sure, but I do remember this one scene
of a guy showing up at our house. It was
the hotel, showing up at the hotel, and he brought
me a necklace and I was like, thanks, you know,
went back to playing, and my mom said, oh, that
(04:23):
was your biological dad, but you better not tell your
step dad that he showed up. And I was like, yes, ma'am,
because you do not aks questions about what is going on.
So I lived all growing up with my stepdad, who
I thought up until that moment was my biological father.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, we all moved from hotel room to this room.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
On the weekends, I would go with my godmother, who
was actually friends. Her daughters were friends with my mom
at sixteen in high school, they were all friends. The
story gets very confusing most times when I tell people
this story, they're like, wait, what, how did you meet
your godmother? Well, my mom had me at sixteen. She
(05:16):
obviously had friends, and she still wanted to party so
she could go and kind of reclaim her childhood, and
so she left me with one of her friend's mom
And so that's how I became in the realm of
this miraculous woman who I call my godmother. Head was
(05:37):
not christened, and.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
She was not like.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
This was a very informal relationship, like here's a baby,
can you take care of this baby? And it wasn't
until I was about round one. My godmother told my
biological mom, listen, just leave her here, go out and
have your life. Go out and do what you want.
But coming in at three in the morning to pick
(06:02):
her up. This in and out is not gonna work.
So just leave her here, come back when you're ready
to get her, and we'll go from there. And she did,
and she didn't show back up until like maybe a
few years later. Wanted to take me back. They went
(06:23):
to court. They had joint custody of me. M So
I was going back and forth between my godmother's house
and my biological mother's house, back and forth, back and forth,
back and forth. I remember crying all the time because
I did not want to go back to my mom's house.
(06:46):
Every Sunday I just would ball. By the time I
would get home to my mom's house, she would beat
me and tell me just stop crying, just be quiet,
You're not gonna go back. And it had gotten kind
of bad that I would skip weekends of not going
to see my godmother because the previous weekend had just
(07:08):
been so bad and I would not wanna come back
to live with my biological mom. So she would say,
you're gonna skip the next weekend as punishment for not
wanting to come back at my godmother's house. I was
pretty much the only child. Her kids were grown, her
kids were off in the military and college, and I
(07:31):
had everything. I was spoiled. It was fantastic, went to church,
had stability, just she had a set of goals. She
held me to her standard. She had a parenting skill.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
She was a mother.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
So I was moving, moving, moving back and forth, back
and forth, and at thirteen, I was by that time,
i'd failed the third grade twice, so it was it
was pretty bad. My favorite aunt, she, what I didn't know,
was pretty much the orchestrator of getting me into my
(08:08):
godmother's home and helping out with the court. She was
a security guard at the courtroom and she knew everyone there,
and so she was pretty much the behind the scenes
advocate for me, and I didn't know that. When I
was thirteen, she told me, you know, you don't have
to stay with her, you can leave. And I looked
(08:28):
at her, I'm like, she's my mother, Like what am
I gonna do? I can't just not stay with her?
She said, you can, you can, and something happened. I
can't even remember. To this day. What But I looked
at my biological mother like right in the eye. She
made me so upset one day and I told her
(08:51):
I am not coming back. I am not coming back here.
I do not wanna stay with you anymore. And she
cursed me out and she told me to leave, like
don't come back, okay, leave And it was the best
thing that could have ever happened. I felt so liberated.
(09:11):
This is at thirteen, Like I can't imagine any thirteen
year old I looking back, I'm like it was thirteen,
but I want it better, like I want it more.
I saw on the weekends, just two days sometimes out
of a week, how other people lived. And I was jealous,
absolutely jealous.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And you've been listening to Danisha Allan tell her story.
She grows up in a tough part of Jacksonville. Biological
dad out of the picture, biological mom out of the
picture for a long time, comes back into her life
after leaving her daughter with a quote godmother who actually
became the mother, well, the mother that Danisha deserved. When
(09:53):
we come back more of Danisha Allen's story here on
our American stories, and we returned to our American stories
in Tanisha Allen's story. When we last left off, Denisha
(10:15):
was telling us about her rough childhood in the city
of Jacksonville, Florida. Denisia now turns to her education. Let's
return to her story.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I was a well I wouldn't say terrible, but I
would not want me as a student. My first education memory,
I think I was in about the second grade and
(10:47):
I had to use the restroom and I asked my teacher, like,
can I go to the restroom? And she said no,
and I was like excuse me, Like so I'm sitting
there and like raising my hand. I'm like, okay, maybe
this is the type of teacher. She's like lame and
she wants you to raise your hand. I remember like
thinking these as a second girl, like okay, i'm'a raise
(11:08):
my hand so I can go to the restrooms. I'm
raise my hand, wiggling in my seat, trying to get
this lady's attention. And she did not answer my hand,
and I yelled again, I have to go to the restroom,
and she said no. When I ask you to do something,
you don't do it. But now you want me to
do something for you, and so no, you're not going
(11:31):
to the restroom, and I walked out.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
I walked out of the classroom. I was like, peace. Think.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
I stayed in the restroom for like maybe ten fifteen minutes.
Came back strutting like can't tell me what I'm not
gonna do a stupid teacher, and I sat down.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
She told me get out and I was like no.
She's like, get out and go.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
To Bertha blah. I was like no, and she would
pick me up and started to like try to pull
me out of the class. I remember like grabbing on
to the table, grabbing onto the wall, like crying, screaming,
kicking her, trying to stay in class, and she won.
She like took me in principal's office. I spent most
(12:12):
of my time in the principal's office. But yeah, that's
my earliest memory of school. We didn't really go to school.
If my mom was tired, she didn't tug us to
the bus stop, and we would just sleep in its
like cool. If it was raining outside, we didn't go
(12:33):
to school. If it was too hot, we didn't go
to school. So we weren't really in school a lot.
I remember my mom. She went to jail a couple times.
Because we weren't going to school. I r I remember
that because then all of a sudden, it was like,
get y'all home, you know, bleep the bleeps out of here,
and just go just walk to school. I don't care.
(12:56):
I wasn't really in school, And when I was in school,
I hated being there. We changed so much that there
was never any significant reason for me to make friends
like my teachers, and the teachers didn't like didn't.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Like us at all. They heard Merriweather.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Was coming through the door and they were just like,
sit down, you know, at least that's how it seemed.
Uh So, the the standard was very low for me
to do well, and I didn't do well. I was
very behind. I remember that. I remember getting picked on.
I remember trying to read and having kids laugh at me,
(13:41):
and I remember a lot of laughing at me. So
by the third grade, there's the test, third grade tests
that you have to take in order to pass to
the next grade in Florida, and I failed the test,
and so that meant I had to either do summer
school or repeat the third grade. To do summer school,
(14:02):
all that was required was for my guardian my mother
to sign a piece of paper. I would still be
able to take the bus, I would still be able
to eat school launch just literally school during the summertime.
She didn't sign papers, just didn't sign. So I failed
(14:28):
third grade. That next year I failed again from the
same thing. Just didn't get a piece of paper signed,
couldn't read.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
It was a low in math.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
And fourth grade, I was accepted into what was called
the Star program, and it's some acronym for something, but
basically students getting into their right grade program. And I
was in a classroom with people who were three and
four grades behind. And this is in fourth grade. We
were the special population, the special kids in the school.
(15:01):
And so in the fourth grade, I was like, I
have to do this, you know, I. I have to
do well.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
And there was.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
This talent show. It was a talent show. I wanted
to participate. I remember I wanted to sing this song
by Yolanda Adams and I practiced so much. I was
also very bad. So my teacher would threaten me, Denisha,
if you do not do well, if you do not
be good, you're gonna get kicked out of the talent show.
(15:32):
I would write myself notes, Deniseha, do not talk in
class deniseha, do not talk, be good, just pages and
pages and pages. I failed, obviously. When the time came
right before I was gonna go on, he told me, no,
what you thought you were gonna participate in a talent show?
(15:54):
No you you you were terrible, like absolutely not hm
I W I was distraught, and from that moment, I
just remember this click going off in my head of
just anger, frustration at every single last teacher. No one
seemed to really want to help me. Everyone just seemed
(16:17):
to just criticize me all the time. From early on
when I would just walk in the classroom and sigh,
nobody was really like actually trying to help. It was
just because of your actions these uh consequences. We're not
gonna try to figure out why you acting like this.
Just no. I think that was the moment in my
(16:38):
mind when I was like, these crappy teachers, These people
don't care. They don't really care about me, so I
don't care either. And by the end of that year
in the fourth grade, I didn't pass the program.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
I wasn't able to go to my right grade.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Again. I was just so so frustrated, and that was
when I was like, you know, this is just some
place I have to be so that my mom doesn't
go to jail. My mom dropped out of high school.
I have many, many family members who dropped out of school,
(17:19):
and I was beginning to see why in the summer
before my sixth grade year. That was during the same
time when I told my mom that I did not
wanna stay with her anymore. Things at home had just
gotten so terrible and I could live with my godmother.
(17:41):
And my godmother was She's just my heart. She wanted
to find a good place for me all the way around.
That year was probably the best time of my life.
She wanted me to go to the church's school. By
that time, the church in my childhood church, the church
(18:02):
that we had been attending i'd come to with her
on the weekends, they built a school and she wanted
me to.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Go to that school.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Of course, she didn't have no way to pay for
that school. We got a scholarship, and the summer before
I started, I had to take a test to see
what level I was on. I was very low, needless
to say, and one of my teachers she agreed to
meet with me. I was not just low in reading,
(18:30):
I was low in math. I didn't know my times tables.
She met with me one on one. I would go
to her house during the summer. I would stay after
school when she was setting up for the school year.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It was very different.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
And you're listening to Denisha Allen, a senior fellow at
the American Federation for Children, and you're beginning to understand
why she works at a place with that name. Education.
She was so important in her life when it became important,
but for much of her early life it wasn't. She
was left behind, left behind, failure of filling out paperwork
(19:10):
by a mom. What just wretched circumstances for a kid
to find herself. And then that godmother, that godmother who
saved her. When we come back more of Denisha Allen's
story here on our American Stories. And we returned to
(19:39):
our American Stories and the final portion of Danisha Allen's story.
When we last left off, Tanisha was telling us about
her early education in the public schools of Jackson, Florida.
Things simply put, we're not good until people started to
pour into her. Let's get back to the story here again.
He's Denisiha Allen.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I thought it was just going to be a much
funny games, to be honest, but we really she really,
I don't know what it's saying. Is crack the whip?
I don't know. But we'd studied and I learned my
times tables I was reading. She did not let up.
She was a student at Jacksonville University, and I remember
(20:19):
going with her to her classes too. That was my
life during the summer. Although I was still kind of
nervous about the start of the year at this new school,
I was kind of used to going to a new school,
though I knew the parade how things were gonna play out.
The teachers were gonna act like they were so happy
(20:40):
to be there, and they would smile greet us. The
classrooms would be so beautiful with the freshest, you know, decorations,
but it would wear off.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
That was just how it went.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Sure enough, on my first day of school, the teachers
were there greeting us with big smiles, hugging everybody. The
classrooms were beat and I was like, yeah, I know
this song very well, and the song is gonna end.
The song never ended. Literally every day until I graduated,
(21:16):
teachers were doing the same thing. I was always very shocked,
even til I graduated, it was still a bit unsettling
that it never stopped. I was in a class with students,
of course, who were all younger than me, and I
(21:38):
had my guard up because I knew what was gonna come.
Teacher would call on me to read. They would laugh
at me, and I would have to claim my space
and let people know that I am nothing to mess with, Like,
do not mess with me. I remember my teacher calling
on me to read, and I s was still stumbling.
(22:00):
Nobody laughed. I looked around and was waiting, like waiting
to cut someone, you know, with my eyes and like
get ready for the playground, Like I was trying to
figure out who the big dog in a class was
so that I could like bring them down. Nobody laughed
(22:22):
at me, even a couple students. They would voluntarily like
try to help me. My sixth grade teacher, though she
invested as much or probably more in me as well students.
(22:43):
Typically how school goes if people forgot m a teacher
will open up the book and say who wants to
read chapter one. The students will then raise their hand,
and the teacher will pick from the students who raised
their hand to read the paragraph in the book. I
(23:03):
never rose my hand. She would always call on me.
So every time we had to read, she would call
on me. I would stumble, stumble, stumble, stumble, until one
day I didn't. And this was literally like the first
(23:24):
nine weeks. It seemed like my life took a one
eighty turn. The name of the school is Expirit of Course,
Center for Learning. We're learning is a joy. Excellence is
the norm, and superiority is our goal. That's the school's model.
We literally like had to recite it all the time.
(23:47):
We had a spirit of excellence. We also had demerits,
which I was like, what are these? You know where
I come from, anything that's different from normal? We say,
what is this white people's stuff? You know? The culture
was different. I wasn't used to the culture. They held
you to a standard. Every kid in my class. It
(24:09):
was a very small C school. I think I had
about seven or eight kids in my sixth grade class.
All of them were on honor roll. I was like
literally the only dumb kid, and I was like, I
cannot be the only dumb kid. Whereas where I was at,
everybody was feeling. The teachers expected for everyone to be
if you gotta see you were like, you need to
(24:30):
be more like him, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
It was just it was so different.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
And so these kids, they were all very smart, they
were all very nice and kind, and I was like this,
you know, pit bull doll who just came off the street.
And they they didn't look at me like I was weird,
but they I think they knew in their mind, like
we came here like that too, you know, like you
(24:55):
will change, you know, kind of this weird environment. But
this one time I was in ISSP in school suspension.
The guy who was over it this time, he was
also a part of the church. He was a fireman
(25:17):
and I think he was in the reserves or something.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
But this was this big black guy.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
He was in the military and a firefighter. I didn't
understand how he did them both, but that's what he
told us all. And I just knew he was big,
intall just towered over over me. He was in charge
of giving me my work and just checking in on
me that time, and in school suspension, he came to
(25:46):
me and he said, Denisha, when is this gonna stop?
When are you gonna change this? When are you gonna
stop acting like this? Do you want to be in jail?
Do you wanna go to jail? I forget how you
phrased it, but it it was something along. It was like,
do you wanna go to jail? Do you wanna be
(26:07):
in jail? And I like started crying. I was like
nothing before it had got to me. You know, I
don't care. You can drag me out of the classroom,
you can s send me home, call me stupid, fail me,
fail me again, take away something that's so important to me.
(26:31):
My life is crab. You know. I N I D
D didn't see the meaning in at thirteen. My life
was just very meaningless and I was just taking part
in whatever it through because I had to. I had
no control. And in that statement, I remember even like now,
(26:52):
I'm like uh, because I realized that I guess I
I I didn't have to go to jail, that was
the norm. And he was asking me, do you want
to do you want to be in jail because of
(27:12):
how you're acting? And I think that was like the
first time that I realized that my actions, like my
actions like can determine my outcome, not because of everybody else.
And he was basically telling me that how I decided
to act all these many many years, I would end
(27:35):
up being in jail, and I was like, no, that's
not what I canna, very like childish.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I don't wanna go to jail.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
No, I don't wanna go to jail. Like no. And
that's when I decided to lay off the crap and
to take ownership of my of my behavior to do better.
And I tried really hard. I tried to do better.
I I would listen to my teachers, I would get help,
(28:04):
and by the first nine weeks my grades had risen.
I went from making d's and f's consistently, maybe a
C here and there.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Just like that.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
That year, my seventh grade year, when I was supposed
to be going into the eighth grade, I did not
go to the eighth grade class. I went into the
ninth grade class. I skipped the eighth grade, and that
ultimately led to me graduating from high school. I don't
think I would have graduated from high school if I
had stuck with the district public school. I had seen
(28:39):
so many of my family member's friends who dropped out.
I think I would have dropped out too. I would
have had a baby, and I would have probably been
working at a McDonald's some fast food place that would
have been my ultimate success story. Education literally saved my life.
(29:00):
I became the first in my family to graduate from
high school. I got a college degree, I went away
to college, and then I moved to DC to work
at the US Department of Education. I lived a fairy
tale life compared to other members in my family, and
(29:21):
it would not have been possible if I didn't receive
people who were really invested in my life and in
my education.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to
Danisha Allen for sharing her story. She works at the
American Federation for Children and now we know why. Also
a special thanks to the Philanthropy Roundtable the folks there
for turning us on to the story. In the Philanthropy
Roundtable is America's leading advocate to support the causes we
(29:56):
all believe in. And my goodness, what a story. What
is it to tell you about the power of one
adult to love a kid. All of us can have
that effect. Folks, mentor and help a kid who might
not have a dad, who might not have a good
influence in their life. The story of Denisha Allen Hear
on our American Stories.
And we returned to our American stories. Up next the
story of Danishia Allen, a senior fellow at the American
Federation for Children. Let's get into the story. Here's Denisha.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
All growing up.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I remember being a little kid and seeing vibrants and
hearing stories of how the community was excited and people
were engaged and they knew one another. The east side
of Jacksonville where I grew up, it's called the Urban Corus.
Sits right along the Saint John's where the Jacksonville Jaguars play,
(00:51):
so very close to where city life is. The baseball
stadium is maybe like a couple blocks from there, and
I remember or we would go to the to the
football games. We would go to the back baseball games,
not that we could afford it, but like community members
would pass out stuff, there will be cookouts. People knew
(01:12):
each other by name. It was a place where community
members really thrived. My godmother, she would tell me stories like, oh, yeah,
uncle Cox, he used to have a barber shop right here.
Uh yeah, this place right here, which n Looking at
the buildings, you would never think that it was a
business of any sort because it was just an abandoned building.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
But there was this.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
This culture, and all of a sudden that stuff stopped.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
For top story tonight, that deadly shooting on the East
Side area, nightclubs and bars are where law enforcement is
finding a younger generation of people in possession of a
new drug called n nd I meta pensylon hydrochloride.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
People stopped having those cookouts.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Drug and alcohol abuse started to increase, and more people,
instead of going to work, were just walking around the
neighborhood aimlessly looking for where they can I guess, get
their next hit. Gang violence increased, and my family was, uh,
I'm assuming a part of that. I would walk around
the neighborhood and people wouldn't know me, you know, they
(02:25):
would say, oh, that's such and such a little daughter.
You don't mess with the Merriweathers. They're gonna get you.
I wore my last name Merriwether as a badge of
honor because everybody knew who I was. Everybody knew my family,
and I didn't think it was you know, I thought
it was great, but unfortunately it also followed me other
places that followed me into like the after school program.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
It followed me into school.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
People knew the Merriweathers and not in a good way.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
How I grew up.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
You don't aks adults questions, y, You just say okay,
you know, like you don't ask some questions. If things
are happening, you just you know, you you just go
along with what's happening. So I never really asked too
many questions about what was happening around me. I just
(03:18):
observed a lot of things and put my head down
and say, yes, ma'am. So my biological dad, I didn't
ask a lot of questions about him. But supposedly the
dad that I grew up with was not my biological father.
I heard stories about how she just went to problem
(03:42):
with this nice young man. He was so nice and
now here you are. And I was just like always
intrigued about this story because I never heard much about it.
But supposedly, at one moment his name was Ernest, then
at another moment his name was Dennis.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So I I I my biological dad.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Up until even today, I'm still very cloudy and blurry.
I'm not sure, but I do remember this one scene
of a guy showing up at our house. It was
the hotel, showing up at the hotel, and he brought
me a necklace and I was like, thanks, you know,
went back to playing, and my mom said, oh, that
(04:23):
was your biological dad, but you better not tell your
step dad that he showed up. And I was like, yes, ma'am,
because you do not aks questions about what is going on.
So I lived all growing up with my stepdad, who
I thought up until that moment was my biological father.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, we all moved from hotel room to this room.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
On the weekends, I would go with my godmother, who
was actually friends. Her daughters were friends with my mom
at sixteen in high school, they were all friends. The
story gets very confusing most times when I tell people
this story, they're like, wait, what, how did you meet
your godmother? Well, my mom had me at sixteen. She
(05:16):
obviously had friends, and she still wanted to party so
she could go and kind of reclaim her childhood, and
so she left me with one of her friend's mom
And so that's how I became in the realm of
this miraculous woman who I call my godmother. Head was
(05:37):
not christened, and.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
She was not like.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
This was a very informal relationship, like here's a baby,
can you take care of this baby? And it wasn't
until I was about round one. My godmother told my
biological mom, listen, just leave her here, go out and
have your life. Go out and do what you want.
But coming in at three in the morning to pick
(06:02):
her up. This in and out is not gonna work.
So just leave her here, come back when you're ready
to get her, and we'll go from there. And she did,
and she didn't show back up until like maybe a
few years later. Wanted to take me back. They went
(06:23):
to court. They had joint custody of me. M So
I was going back and forth between my godmother's house
and my biological mother's house, back and forth, back and forth,
back and forth. I remember crying all the time because
I did not want to go back to my mom's house.
(06:46):
Every Sunday I just would ball. By the time I
would get home to my mom's house, she would beat
me and tell me just stop crying, just be quiet,
You're not gonna go back. And it had gotten kind
of bad that I would skip weekends of not going
to see my godmother because the previous weekend had just
(07:08):
been so bad and I would not wanna come back
to live with my biological mom. So she would say,
you're gonna skip the next weekend as punishment for not
wanting to come back at my godmother's house. I was
pretty much the only child. Her kids were grown, her
kids were off in the military and college, and I
(07:31):
had everything. I was spoiled. It was fantastic, went to church,
had stability, just she had a set of goals. She
held me to her standard. She had a parenting skill.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
She was a mother.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
So I was moving, moving, moving back and forth, back
and forth, and at thirteen, I was by that time,
i'd failed the third grade twice, so it was it
was pretty bad. My favorite aunt, she, what I didn't know,
was pretty much the orchestrator of getting me into my
(08:08):
godmother's home and helping out with the court. She was
a security guard at the courtroom and she knew everyone there,
and so she was pretty much the behind the scenes
advocate for me, and I didn't know that. When I
was thirteen, she told me, you know, you don't have
to stay with her, you can leave. And I looked
(08:28):
at her, I'm like, she's my mother, Like what am
I gonna do? I can't just not stay with her?
She said, you can, you can, and something happened. I
can't even remember. To this day. What But I looked
at my biological mother like right in the eye. She
made me so upset one day and I told her
(08:51):
I am not coming back. I am not coming back here.
I do not wanna stay with you anymore. And she
cursed me out and she told me to leave, like
don't come back, okay, leave And it was the best
thing that could have ever happened. I felt so liberated.
(09:11):
This is at thirteen, Like I can't imagine any thirteen
year old I looking back, I'm like it was thirteen,
but I want it better, like I want it more.
I saw on the weekends, just two days sometimes out
of a week, how other people lived. And I was jealous,
absolutely jealous.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And you've been listening to Danisha Allan tell her story.
She grows up in a tough part of Jacksonville. Biological
dad out of the picture, biological mom out of the
picture for a long time, comes back into her life
after leaving her daughter with a quote godmother who actually
became the mother, well, the mother that Danisha deserved. When
(09:53):
we come back more of Danisha Allen's story here on
our American stories, and we returned to our American stories
in Tanisha Allen's story. When we last left off, Denisha
(10:15):
was telling us about her rough childhood in the city
of Jacksonville, Florida. Denisia now turns to her education. Let's
return to her story.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I was a well I wouldn't say terrible, but I
would not want me as a student. My first education memory,
I think I was in about the second grade and
(10:47):
I had to use the restroom and I asked my teacher, like,
can I go to the restroom? And she said no,
and I was like excuse me, Like so I'm sitting
there and like raising my hand. I'm like, okay, maybe
this is the type of teacher. She's like lame and
she wants you to raise your hand. I remember like
thinking these as a second girl, like okay, i'm'a raise
(11:08):
my hand so I can go to the restrooms. I'm
raise my hand, wiggling in my seat, trying to get
this lady's attention. And she did not answer my hand,
and I yelled again, I have to go to the restroom,
and she said no. When I ask you to do something,
you don't do it. But now you want me to
do something for you, and so no, you're not going
(11:31):
to the restroom, and I walked out.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
I walked out of the classroom. I was like, peace. Think.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
I stayed in the restroom for like maybe ten fifteen minutes.
Came back strutting like can't tell me what I'm not
gonna do a stupid teacher, and I sat down.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
She told me get out and I was like no.
She's like, get out and go.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
To Bertha blah. I was like no, and she would
pick me up and started to like try to pull
me out of the class. I remember like grabbing on
to the table, grabbing onto the wall, like crying, screaming,
kicking her, trying to stay in class, and she won.
She like took me in principal's office. I spent most
(12:12):
of my time in the principal's office. But yeah, that's
my earliest memory of school. We didn't really go to school.
If my mom was tired, she didn't tug us to
the bus stop, and we would just sleep in its
like cool. If it was raining outside, we didn't go
(12:33):
to school. If it was too hot, we didn't go
to school. So we weren't really in school a lot.
I remember my mom. She went to jail a couple times.
Because we weren't going to school. I r I remember
that because then all of a sudden, it was like,
get y'all home, you know, bleep the bleeps out of here,
and just go just walk to school. I don't care.
(12:56):
I wasn't really in school, And when I was in school,
I hated being there. We changed so much that there
was never any significant reason for me to make friends
like my teachers, and the teachers didn't like didn't.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Like us at all. They heard Merriweather.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Was coming through the door and they were just like,
sit down, you know, at least that's how it seemed.
Uh So, the the standard was very low for me
to do well, and I didn't do well. I was
very behind. I remember that. I remember getting picked on.
I remember trying to read and having kids laugh at me,
(13:41):
and I remember a lot of laughing at me. So
by the third grade, there's the test, third grade tests
that you have to take in order to pass to
the next grade in Florida, and I failed the test,
and so that meant I had to either do summer
school or repeat the third grade. To do summer school,
(14:02):
all that was required was for my guardian my mother
to sign a piece of paper. I would still be
able to take the bus, I would still be able
to eat school launch just literally school during the summertime.
She didn't sign papers, just didn't sign. So I failed
(14:28):
third grade. That next year I failed again from the
same thing. Just didn't get a piece of paper signed,
couldn't read.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
It was a low in math.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
And fourth grade, I was accepted into what was called
the Star program, and it's some acronym for something, but
basically students getting into their right grade program. And I
was in a classroom with people who were three and
four grades behind. And this is in fourth grade. We
were the special population, the special kids in the school.
(15:01):
And so in the fourth grade, I was like, I
have to do this, you know, I. I have to
do well.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
And there was.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
This talent show. It was a talent show. I wanted
to participate. I remember I wanted to sing this song
by Yolanda Adams and I practiced so much. I was
also very bad. So my teacher would threaten me, Denisha,
if you do not do well, if you do not
be good, you're gonna get kicked out of the talent show.
(15:32):
I would write myself notes, Deniseha, do not talk in
class deniseha, do not talk, be good, just pages and
pages and pages. I failed, obviously. When the time came
right before I was gonna go on, he told me, no,
what you thought you were gonna participate in a talent show?
(15:54):
No you you you were terrible, like absolutely not hm
I W I was distraught, and from that moment, I
just remember this click going off in my head of
just anger, frustration at every single last teacher. No one
seemed to really want to help me. Everyone just seemed
(16:17):
to just criticize me all the time. From early on
when I would just walk in the classroom and sigh,
nobody was really like actually trying to help. It was
just because of your actions these uh consequences. We're not
gonna try to figure out why you acting like this.
Just no. I think that was the moment in my
(16:38):
mind when I was like, these crappy teachers, These people
don't care. They don't really care about me, so I
don't care either. And by the end of that year
in the fourth grade, I didn't pass the program.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
I wasn't able to go to my right grade.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Again. I was just so so frustrated, and that was
when I was like, you know, this is just some
place I have to be so that my mom doesn't
go to jail. My mom dropped out of high school.
I have many, many family members who dropped out of school,
(17:19):
and I was beginning to see why in the summer
before my sixth grade year. That was during the same
time when I told my mom that I did not
wanna stay with her anymore. Things at home had just
gotten so terrible and I could live with my godmother.
(17:41):
And my godmother was She's just my heart. She wanted
to find a good place for me all the way around.
That year was probably the best time of my life.
She wanted me to go to the church's school. By
that time, the church in my childhood church, the church
(18:02):
that we had been attending i'd come to with her
on the weekends, they built a school and she wanted
me to.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Go to that school.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Of course, she didn't have no way to pay for
that school. We got a scholarship, and the summer before
I started, I had to take a test to see
what level I was on. I was very low, needless
to say, and one of my teachers she agreed to
meet with me. I was not just low in reading,
(18:30):
I was low in math. I didn't know my times tables.
She met with me one on one. I would go
to her house during the summer. I would stay after
school when she was setting up for the school year.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It was very different.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
And you're listening to Denisha Allen, a senior fellow at
the American Federation for Children, and you're beginning to understand
why she works at a place with that name. Education.
She was so important in her life when it became important,
but for much of her early life it wasn't. She
was left behind, left behind, failure of filling out paperwork
(19:10):
by a mom. What just wretched circumstances for a kid
to find herself. And then that godmother, that godmother who
saved her. When we come back more of Denisha Allen's
story here on our American Stories. And we returned to
(19:39):
our American Stories and the final portion of Danisha Allen's story.
When we last left off, Tanisha was telling us about
her early education in the public schools of Jackson, Florida.
Things simply put, we're not good until people started to
pour into her. Let's get back to the story here again.
He's Denisiha Allen.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I thought it was just going to be a much
funny games, to be honest, but we really she really,
I don't know what it's saying. Is crack the whip?
I don't know. But we'd studied and I learned my
times tables I was reading. She did not let up.
She was a student at Jacksonville University, and I remember
(20:19):
going with her to her classes too. That was my
life during the summer. Although I was still kind of
nervous about the start of the year at this new school,
I was kind of used to going to a new school,
though I knew the parade how things were gonna play out.
The teachers were gonna act like they were so happy
(20:40):
to be there, and they would smile greet us. The
classrooms would be so beautiful with the freshest, you know, decorations,
but it would wear off.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
That was just how it went.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Sure enough, on my first day of school, the teachers
were there greeting us with big smiles, hugging everybody. The
classrooms were beat and I was like, yeah, I know
this song very well, and the song is gonna end.
The song never ended. Literally every day until I graduated,
(21:16):
teachers were doing the same thing. I was always very shocked,
even til I graduated, it was still a bit unsettling
that it never stopped. I was in a class with students,
of course, who were all younger than me, and I
(21:38):
had my guard up because I knew what was gonna come.
Teacher would call on me to read. They would laugh
at me, and I would have to claim my space
and let people know that I am nothing to mess with, Like,
do not mess with me. I remember my teacher calling
on me to read, and I s was still stumbling.
(22:00):
Nobody laughed. I looked around and was waiting, like waiting
to cut someone, you know, with my eyes and like
get ready for the playground, Like I was trying to
figure out who the big dog in a class was
so that I could like bring them down. Nobody laughed
(22:22):
at me, even a couple students. They would voluntarily like
try to help me. My sixth grade teacher, though she
invested as much or probably more in me as well students.
(22:43):
Typically how school goes if people forgot m a teacher
will open up the book and say who wants to
read chapter one. The students will then raise their hand,
and the teacher will pick from the students who raised
their hand to read the paragraph in the book. I
(23:03):
never rose my hand. She would always call on me.
So every time we had to read, she would call
on me. I would stumble, stumble, stumble, stumble, until one
day I didn't. And this was literally like the first
(23:24):
nine weeks. It seemed like my life took a one
eighty turn. The name of the school is Expirit of Course,
Center for Learning. We're learning is a joy. Excellence is
the norm, and superiority is our goal. That's the school's model.
We literally like had to recite it all the time.
(23:47):
We had a spirit of excellence. We also had demerits,
which I was like, what are these? You know where
I come from, anything that's different from normal? We say,
what is this white people's stuff? You know? The culture
was different. I wasn't used to the culture. They held
you to a standard. Every kid in my class. It
(24:09):
was a very small C school. I think I had
about seven or eight kids in my sixth grade class.
All of them were on honor roll. I was like
literally the only dumb kid, and I was like, I
cannot be the only dumb kid. Whereas where I was at,
everybody was feeling. The teachers expected for everyone to be
if you gotta see you were like, you need to
(24:30):
be more like him, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
It was just it was so different.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
And so these kids, they were all very smart, they
were all very nice and kind, and I was like this,
you know, pit bull doll who just came off the street.
And they they didn't look at me like I was weird,
but they I think they knew in their mind, like
we came here like that too, you know, like you
(24:55):
will change, you know, kind of this weird environment. But
this one time I was in ISSP in school suspension.
The guy who was over it this time, he was
also a part of the church. He was a fireman
(25:17):
and I think he was in the reserves or something.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
But this was this big black guy.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
He was in the military and a firefighter. I didn't
understand how he did them both, but that's what he
told us all. And I just knew he was big,
intall just towered over over me. He was in charge
of giving me my work and just checking in on
me that time, and in school suspension, he came to
(25:46):
me and he said, Denisha, when is this gonna stop?
When are you gonna change this? When are you gonna
stop acting like this? Do you want to be in jail?
Do you wanna go to jail? I forget how you
phrased it, but it it was something along. It was like,
do you wanna go to jail? Do you wanna be
(26:07):
in jail? And I like started crying. I was like
nothing before it had got to me. You know, I
don't care. You can drag me out of the classroom,
you can s send me home, call me stupid, fail me,
fail me again, take away something that's so important to me.
(26:31):
My life is crab. You know. I N I D
D didn't see the meaning in at thirteen. My life
was just very meaningless and I was just taking part
in whatever it through because I had to. I had
no control. And in that statement, I remember even like now,
(26:52):
I'm like uh, because I realized that I guess I
I I didn't have to go to jail, that was
the norm. And he was asking me, do you want
to do you want to be in jail because of
(27:12):
how you're acting? And I think that was like the
first time that I realized that my actions, like my
actions like can determine my outcome, not because of everybody else.
And he was basically telling me that how I decided
to act all these many many years, I would end
(27:35):
up being in jail, and I was like, no, that's
not what I canna, very like childish.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I don't wanna go to jail.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
No, I don't wanna go to jail. Like no. And
that's when I decided to lay off the crap and
to take ownership of my of my behavior to do better.
And I tried really hard. I tried to do better.
I I would listen to my teachers, I would get help,
(28:04):
and by the first nine weeks my grades had risen.
I went from making d's and f's consistently, maybe a
C here and there.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Just like that.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
That year, my seventh grade year, when I was supposed
to be going into the eighth grade, I did not
go to the eighth grade class. I went into the
ninth grade class. I skipped the eighth grade, and that
ultimately led to me graduating from high school. I don't
think I would have graduated from high school if I
had stuck with the district public school. I had seen
(28:39):
so many of my family member's friends who dropped out.
I think I would have dropped out too. I would
have had a baby, and I would have probably been
working at a McDonald's some fast food place that would
have been my ultimate success story. Education literally saved my life.
(29:00):
I became the first in my family to graduate from
high school. I got a college degree, I went away
to college, and then I moved to DC to work
at the US Department of Education. I lived a fairy
tale life compared to other members in my family, and
(29:21):
it would not have been possible if I didn't receive
people who were really invested in my life and in
my education.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to
Danisha Allen for sharing her story. She works at the
American Federation for Children and now we know why. Also
a special thanks to the Philanthropy Roundtable the folks there
for turning us on to the story. In the Philanthropy
Roundtable is America's leading advocate to support the causes we
(29:56):
all believe in. And my goodness, what a story. What
is it to tell you about the power of one
adult to love a kid. All of us can have
that effect. Folks, mentor and help a kid who might
not have a dad, who might not have a good
influence in their life. The story of Denisha Allen Hear
on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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