Born in a tough inner-city Bronx, N.Y., neighborhood, Dominic Carter was abandoned by his father and raised by his grandmother due to his mother’s struggle with mental illness.Carter’s high school guidance counselor told him not to waste time applying to college, saying Carter would most likely end up dead or in jail. He made it a personal mission to prove the guidance counselor wrong. After finishing college in three years and receiving his BA in journalism at State University of New York,

Carter was thrice denied entrance to Syracuse University’s graduate broadcast journalism program, which had yet to have any black or Latino participants at that time (the 1980s).

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which through litigation and other means champions the rights of minorities facing discrimination, was then in its seventh decade of existence, with multiple chapters throughout the U.S.

Source: Monroe NAACP holds annual gala