The District Chronicles

Issue date: 7/27/08 Section: Neighborhood

Media Credit: Kevin Davis/Novelteens Ink, Washington Math, Science, and Technology High School

Roberta McLeod Reeves, director of the Blackburn Center at Howard University, sits on a bench with a co-worker in the center.   She is venting to the co-worker about how a young man had just disrespected a visitor and her.

"He was outside showing out and when I talked to him, he started to show out with me," Reeves is recounting. Her coworker gets up and tells a security guard standing nearby."He's out there!" she says with a sense of urgency.

Reeves' co-worker and the security guard scurry outside after the scoundrel. Minutes later, they both deliver the rascal to Reeves, still sitting on the bench taking a call from an old student friend.

"Excuse me Ms. Reeves. Can I talk to you?" the young man mumbles in an apologetic demeanor. "I apologize for disrespecting you even though that wasn't my intention. So I'm sorry."

Reeves responds lovingly but sternly, "That's alright." For all her almost 25 years Reeves has been director of Blackburn Center at Howard University, she has been correcting, guiding and teaching teenagers and young adults good manners and proper decorum.

Stories abound at Howard of Reeves chasing young men out of Blackburn Center if they were inappropriately attired or using gutter language. They used to get into the fountain outside of the student union building and steal the change. Then they would come into the center, feet wet leaving unsightly footmarks on the floor and somehow on the walls, too.

The indomitable but caring Reeves would chase them out of the pool, telling the rogues not to steal the pennies out of the water. "If you need anything I'll give it to you," she would offer. "And stop coming in here causing trouble!"

Reeves said she is simply living out her aunts' and grandmother's principles of kindness and caring. They raised her on the belief that an act of kindness is worth more than money. From them she learned that everyday she should perform a random act of kindness to someone because you don't know how that person will impact your life down the line.

Angela Mills, a graduate student in African Studies at Howard, has known Ms. Reeves for almost 20 years. She described her simply as "loving and caring." "She will go that extra mile to help you," said Mills who studied fine arts as an undergraduate.

Mills and other local up-and-coming artists know too well how difficult it is to get gallery space to exhibit arts that do produce no or little revenue to the gallery - so does Reeves. Years ago she founded

Continued...

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