Kevin Bjerregaard grew up outside Milwaukee and got degrees in journalism and law before becoming a teacher at H.D. Woodson High, in the District’s rough eastern end. One day he asked his students if he should worry about walking to the Metro on Benning Road. Ra-Heem Jackson spoke up. “Nothing will happen to you if you are not afraid,” he said.
Jackson was one of Bjerregaard’s best students: bright and calm in class, fierce on the basketball court. As a junior, he had lined up a $50,000 Gates Foundation scholarship for college.
When “Mr. B” left school that day, Ra-Heem happened to be waiting outside. “Want to walk to the Metro?” he asked. And they did for a few days, until Mr. B said he felt safe.
On April 7, Ra-Heem Jackson was gunned down as he walked home near Benning Road on Congress Street. He was 16. Mr. B felt as if he had lost a son. On Thursday, he organized the first annual Ra-Heem Jackson Poetry Slam in Woodson’s library. Student poets read and sang; judges awarded prizes.
Why poetry? Jackson was a private poet. It was a surprise to his mother, NaClick Webb, who listened while the students read.
“He kept it quiet,” Ebonie Davis told me.
Davis came in first in both the oral and written poetry competitions Thursday. She has been writing poetry since third grade, but she collaborated with Ra-Heem last year in Honors English III, when they were asked to perform one of their poems.
“He was a laid-back kid,” she said. “Very smart. He’s not someone you’d think something like that would happen to.”
Ebonie’s poems flirt with fear and death. One begins:
Crazy Thoughts Emerging in My Head
Am I Alive Or better off DEAD
Another, published in the Insider, the school newspaper, ends with this couplet about growing up without a dad:
But What Is A Girl To Know Love
Without Love From Her Father
Bjerregaard was scheduled to close the spring issue of the Insider on Wednesday, April 6. He was sick and put if off until Friday. He arrived at school to learn Ra-Heem had been shot dead the night before. He stopped the presses and put his star student’s death on the front page.
Ironically, Ra-Heem Jackson’s first published poem was among the 15 included in the paper’s pullout section.
Walking Benning Road At Night is like,
being scared on your first fight.
It’s crazy. You are paranoid, cautious on every
turn. You hear a voice, turn around.
On April 7, Ra-Heem heard a shot that knocked him to the ground on Congress Street, not far from his home. The killer pumped in 10 more rounds. Police have said there is a person they want to talk to in the case but have made no arrest.
His fellow poets found words to express their connection and sorrow at Thursday’s first annual slam. Their lines were leavened with fear. Ra-Heem advised Mr. B “to not be afraid,” but he and his buddies live their lives in fear, as their poems make so clear.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
