Here’s a story that makes us proud. It’s about Destiny Crockett, this year’s valedictorian at Clyde C. Miller Academy in our city, a city public school that has been a good friend to the St. Louis Urban Debate League. It is also about Destiny’s partner, Cameron Smith, a fine student as well, and the success the two of them have achieved as debaters this year, winning Missouri state championships and achieving Top 16 status at the UDL national debate competition last month. In June they’ll compete in the National Forensic League’s national Tournament as the first St. Louis team to qualify for that event.

My beloved, Kathleen Farrell, is on the SLUDL board of directors. We have watched these young people for three years now, watched them grow and succeed, and we have watched debate help them do it. These things have been beyond heartening to witness, and it is also beyond heartening that Destiny and Cameron’s sucess has unfolded in an urban St. Louis city school, which sits just north of the Delmar divide in this still divided city that is nonetheless ahead of its time. A recent essay on our city, written by anthropologist, Sarah Kendzior, and originally published by Al Jazeera, has been widely attacked, but I think it is spot on. Clyde C. Miller Academy, SLUDL, Destiny and Cameron, and their fellow debaters in this new city league are signs of hope in a city that still nourishes the dream of social justice.

Destiny will go to Princeton in the fall—she has already spent two summers there participating in debate camps and other programs. Cameron will attend Wylie College in Marshall, Texas, the site of the 2007 film The Great Debaters. Denzell Washington has recently endowed the debate program at Wylie. We wish Destiny and Cameron success and happiness in their colege careers and beyond. As Sarah Kendzior points out, the American dream may still be alive in this small city on the banks of the Mississippi. Certainly Cameron and Destiny seem to be achieving it.