{"id":14887,"date":"2012-05-31T17:06:35","date_gmt":"2012-05-31T21:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=14887"},"modified":"2012-05-31T17:06:35","modified_gmt":"2012-05-31T21:06:35","slug":"homeless-atl-student-graduates-hs-and-is-off-to-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=14887","title":{"rendered":"Homeless ATL Student Graduates Hs And Is Off To\u00a0College!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ATLANTA &#8211; <strong>Fred Dukes<\/strong> recently walked the stage to receive his high school diploma from Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, Georgia. What made this young man\u2019s achievement so much sweeter was that he did it while being homeless and without any family support.<br \/>\n<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Dukes<\/strong>, who scored a 24 on his ACT and has a 3.0 GPA, had been homeless since December. His mother moved to South Carolina for a job, but he opted to stay behind.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dukes<\/strong> decision meant that he had to live without any family support. <strong>Dukes<\/strong> stayed with any friend who had extra space. A close friend of his, <strong>Malcolm<\/strong>, allowed him to stay at his place if needed.<\/p>\n<p>In December, when he was forced to stay in a homeless shelter in downtown Atlanta, <strong>Dukes<\/strong> says life got really tough. \u201cI\u00a0got into an altercation with a couple other people that were staying here\u00a0and they wanted to take my stuff, my belongings,\u201d said <strong>Dukes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dukes<\/strong> is not the only young person to overcome homelessness in pursuit of his or her education.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Eboni Boykin<\/strong>, who earned a full scholarship to Columbia University, despite being homeless for much of her childhood. These back-to-back stories can never grow too repetitive. Just as we see negative, non-stop commentary and reporting about the ills of our community, we have to be as aggressive in highlighting the great feats our young people overcome to realize their goals.<\/p>\n<p>He plans on attending Coker College in South Carolina in the fall where he wants to major in business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ATLANTA &#8211; Fred Dukes recently walked the stage to receive his high school diploma from Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, Georgia. What made this young man\u2019s achievement so much sweeter was that he did it while being homeless and without any family support. Dukes, who scored a 24 on his ACT and has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}