Pride is the key word Part 4

We toured the building looking in on the various activities. In a small room, a student teacher, Mitzi Beach, was supervising an after school study group for younger children. Reading , math and languages are the subject in which most help is needed.

In the gym, young Cadet Corps officers were putting their uniformed squads through their paces, and the air rang with commands: "Attenshun! Salute!" There was no fooling around. Every boy in the lower ranks apparently is determined to show he is officer material.

In a medium-seized room , choir director Darold Hunt was conducting a practice session. The boys whose voices were raised in song were wearing spotless white surplices over their black cassocks. Here, too, apparently, neatness counts. Hunt, a bearded, intense, articulate young man, is studying conducting at Juilliard. He will be conducting at Harlem chorale, a semi-professional group, this coming season.

Admitting that he is a firm disciplinarian, Hunt said, "These boys put you through hell, but they're beautiful. You get to love them very quickly. Why am I doing this? I hope that by exposing them to music I'm bringing them something they don't ordinary get in their lives. That they're black is superfluous-I refuse t accept black paranoia-but it is important for them to have a black leader. If they accept that, there is a feedback to themselves of their black image in the person of a leader."

Pride is the key word Part 3

"Most of our youngster-we have two age groups, 8-13 and 14-21- come from impoverished homes, but we also have middle-class children. Sixty percent come from broken homes. We have Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and four Jewish boys in the Cadet Corps. There are girls groups in our program, too... Ebony Dolls, Njema Girls and Mod Squad, we call them , and they of course, don't wear uniforms or take part in our military program.
"Some of our non-military activities are: a drum and bugle corp that has filled a wall with prizes they've won this year; a choir; fencing; karate; a steel band, and basketball. The girls attend classes in ballet, guitar, modeling and charm, sewing, cooking, secretarial work and heritage. There are both boys and girls in the after-school tutoring sessions and the Pen and Scroll Fraternity."

Pride is the key word Part 2

"Five of the nine boys I stared with, "he recalled, "were ward lords-ghetto gang leaders. The military framework, the uniforms, was a come-on. It established the premise: keep your shoes shined and your shirt washed.

"The program is a means to and end, to make better oriented citizens who are able to over come the adversities of their environment. Our children come here spiritually deprived as well as economically deprived. Leadership training permeates the program, and we stress the fact that every child has worth and value, has leadership potential , no matter what his circumstances. But the building is not a community center-after the cadets get their training, they go back to the dozen or so churches the come from all over the city and they become leaders of youth groups there. The Cadet Corps is one of the 36 projects of the Madison Society, which is a church-oriented organization.

"Pride is the key word" New York Sunday News June 15, 1969

Harlem's Cadet Corps trains young men for leadership in their own communities.

Article written by : May Okon, New York Sunday News, June 15, 1969

In THEIR SPANKING CLEAN tan uniforms...... white web belting at the waist and crisscrossing the chest, spit-and-polished shoes, shakos with white visors and chin straps.... a line of the New York City Mission Society Cadet Corps saluted smartly with downpointed sabers, their young black faces aglow with pride.

Pride is the key word of the Cadets Corps, a Harlem-based, character-building, leadership-training program for ghetto youngsters that has been remarkably successful since its inception in 1947.

Started by Wilbert E. Burgie, a City Mission staff member, in a local church with nine boys, the Cadet Corps now has 2,300 enrolled members whose military activities jam-pack the four major rooms of their inadequate headquarters, a former church at 531 W. 155th St., from early-morning till after dark.

"We have trouble getting the children to go home at night, "smile Burgie, the low key yet nonetheless dynamic director and commanding officer of the oldest para-military (uniforms, yes-weapons, no) group in the Harlem area. Burgie sees himself more as a teacher and counselor than a military leader.