“One Chance Can Change Everything”: 40 Years Since Berea College Said Yes
- hasan7459
- Aug 2
- 9 min read
By Hasan Davis, J.D. – The Hope Dealer
Forty years ago, this week—August 1985—I picked up the p
hone in my mother’s kitchen in Atlanta, Georgia and made a collect call to a place I had never visited, in a state I had never been to. I was 18 years old, freshly expelled, freshly certified with a GED, and clinging to a thin thread of hope that maybe, just maybe, Berea College would say yes.
I didn’t understand how college admissions worked. I didn’t know that if you hadn’t heard anything by the week before classes were supposed to start, it usually meant they didn’t want you. But I also didn’t know how to give up—not after everything I had already survived.
8 Months Before
In December 1984, I turned 18. That same week, I completed seven long years of court-ordered probation for an arrest and adjudication as a juvenile offender at just 11 years old. While most teens were planning prom and college visits, I was still trying to dodge the wreckage of desperate choices and early systems involvement, fighting for the right to keep dreaming.
That same week, as we were all preparing to go home for the Christmas holidays, I was called into the administrator's office at Horizons School—the school I had attended since 8th grade, the place I lived since 10th grade. I sat in that office many times before, usually on the wrong end of a disciplinary meeting. I remember two years earlier being sent to that same office where Dr. Lorraine Wilson looked at me, unblinking, and said something I’ll never forget: “I believe you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, Hasan, and all you can do now, is make me a fool for believing such things about you.”
That moment has stayed with me since. But so does the one that came two years later, I had been called back into that same office. But this time, Lorraine explained to me that I’d just failed a class that is required for graduation, and the school would not be offering it again in my final semester. Which meant I wouldn’t be eligible to graduate in the spring—so I wouldn’t be welcomed back to Horizons School after Christmas break. Just like that, Horizons, my safe harbor, had closed its doors. More clearly, I feared that I had jeopardized my last best chance to dream…
6 Months Before
Back in the house of my parents, Alice and Jikki, by February 1985, I was working at Southwest Montessori with my best friend Derrick, running the streets with him and my brother Sean, and doing what I could to keep my youngest brother and sister Tony and Shawnta safe. While my oldest sister, Theresa was off trying to crack the code of college. Derrick, Sean and I had all found ourselves out of school for one reason or another. Derrick and I made a pact: we’d get our GEDs, go to college, and make something of ourselves. That spring, we both signed up for the GED exam.
4 Months Before
In April, Derrick and I showed up to take our test. We finished way too early, looked around the room at everyone still working, and wordlessly agreed: this is all we’ve got. Either we are secretly brilliant, or we just bombed our last chance at a different life. So, we handed in our booklets and walked out. Back into the hustle. A few weeks later, the results were in... I don't know if we were secretly brilliant. But, we did pass.
2 Months Before
I had no plan, no backup. But, at the beginning of the school year, I remembered Lorraine bringing a guest in to talk about this little college in Kentucky called Berea. They said Berea only accepted students from low-income backgrounds. The college didn’t charge tuition, and the students all worked campus jobs, they called it a work study college. And they had a committment to educating students who might otherwise never get access to a high quality education. Horizons was also work study school, all of the students there were expected to have jobs around the campus. We built green houses, did arts and crafts booths at festivals, printed and sold greeting cards, and much more. Berea sounded like my kind of place. Sounded like the only shot I had left.
So, I sent in an late application. I didn’t know much about Berea. I didn’t know much about Kentucky either—except what I had seen on TV, and that didn’t give me much hope. Still, I applied. The application was free, so I figured I had nothing to lose.
1 Day Before
By the end of July, I had heard nothing from Berea. Then I learned that two of my classmates from Horizons—Tina and Monica—had already been accepted. Then it finally hit me: college was starting soon, and I hadn’t received an acceptance letter. That could only mean one thing… My letter had gotten lost in the mail, maybe was sent to the wrong address.
So, I marched into the kitchen, picked up the phone receiver off the wall mount, and dialed Berea College. It was a collect call because I could not afford to pay for a long-distance call. So, I hoped that whoever answers phones at a college would be nice enough to accept my call. When the campus operator accepted the call, I was a little surprised, when she asked who I wanted to speak now, I was shocked, realizing that I had not really imagined getting this far. I didn’t have a clue who I was supposed to talk to. So, I quickly composed myself and spoke with as much confidence as I could muster, “I would like to speak to The Director of Admissions.” I heard a click… then a buzz. Just as i had convinced myself that she had hung up on me, I heard “John Cook, Director of admissions, how can I help you.”
WHAT?!?!?!
I froze. Then I blurted out that I was calling from Atlanta, had applied to Berea but hadn’t heard anything, and i know that classes start next week, so I was just calling to see where my acceptance letter was.
Mr. Cook listened patiently, with more than a few deep calming breaths, I imagine. He then put me on hold to retrieve my application from wherever they put the “you got to be kidding me” applications. When he finally returned, he explained the plain truth: Berea was one of the most competitive application processes in the nation. They had thousands of applicants each year for a couple of hundred openings. He said that the freshmen class had already been filled, and he had a few promising applications on his desk as substitutes for students who had been invited but decided not to attend. Then he paused. “I don’t think this is going to work out for you.”
Replaying those last words in my head I thought, I don’t think it’s going to work out for you doesn’t sound like an answer. And before I could catch myself, I blurted out “Mr. Cook, I kinda need to know for sure...” I think he was as surprised by my words as I was. But before I could apologize, he spoke. “Ok, Mr. Davis. How about I call you back to confirm that after I look over my papers.”
I stammered a clumsy thank you and quickly hung up.
An hour later, the phone rang.
“Mr. Davis?” The voice on the other end questioned. I recognized Mr. Cooks voice immediately. Suddenly my whole world felt like it was hanging by a thin tangled phone cord. My heart stopped. “Mr. Davis," he continued, "I think we’re going to give you a chance.” I don’t even remember speaking or hanging up the phone. But, contrary to my earlier confusion, I believed with my whole heart that "I think we are going to give you a chance" DID sound like an answer! It sounded like a YES. And just like that, I was going to college.
What It Took to Get There
Excited for this unknown next chapter I began to pack. By pack I mean I stuffed all of my possessions into my old gym bag and a few garbage bags. My family threw together a “Hasan is going to college” party. As friends and family gathered in our living room. My mentor, Bill Prankard, whom I had been apprenticed to as a screen printer, showed up with a wooden trunk—steel-gray, rope handles, padlock on the front. I recognized it. It was an old, junked box he’d found on the side of the road and hauled into his truck weeks earlier. Now it was painted, polished, and gifted to me.
“College students need a place to keep their things,” he said. I made this on for you. I smiled. I guess I am a college student, now, I thought. I had something to put my things in.
On Sunday we gathered my belongings, backpack, coat, gym bag, and that chest. Then we loaded everything into Jikki’s old Gremlin and set off for Berea. As things often go with Gremlins, the car broke down in Tennessee. They scraped together enough to get what we needed to patch it back together. We arrived at the Berea exit close to midnight.
The streets were empty. The town was quiet. The campus was closed. We finally found one student at the information desk. Orientation concluded hours ago. Rooms had been assigned. Parents said goodbyes. My name wasn’t on any room assignment list.
They called someone from Student Life, and we were sent across campus to Bingham Hall. The Head Residents of Bingham, Virgil and Jackie Burnside, explained there were no rooms left—but there was a makeshift sleeping area set up in the lounge, where other students without a room assignment were sleeping a row of beds. There was room for one more.
Before my mother left, she pressed $20 into my hand and said, “It’s time for you to decide who’s right about you—and who’s wrong.” She clasped my hand between hers, “but you have to make a choice, now.”
Thus began my journey as a college student at Berea College.
My Secret life
I eventually got a room and a roommate, Marcus. People were friendly, but I didn’t know how to be part of this world. I wore my aviator sunglasses and my Army jacket like a shield. I tested into 010 math and 015 English—zero level remedial courses that wouldn’t earn me credit but would hopefully get me ready for general studies classes.
Every night, after Marcus fell asleep, I would quietly reach into my drawer for one of the first-grade penmanship pads my mother had subtly tucked into my trunk. you know, Blue line, red dotted line, blue line. I would trace a few pages of letters like I had been doing since kindergarten. I practice my handwriting in secret, ashamed and afraid thst someone would eventually find me out.
I still struggled with quick reading comprehension. I had dyslexia, undiagnosed for years. So, my strategy was, pick one book for the next day’s classes, read, four or five pages, repeating those pages over and over, memorize enough that I could say something relevant at the start of class the next day and maybe seem like I belonged.
Most nights, I went to sleep thinking, you talked your way into college. Now you’ve got to figure out how to stay here.
Belonging
The culture shock hit hard. I wasn’t used to small town living. I didn’t think that many of the other students looked like me, talked like me, or shared my experience of the world. Back home, I had my brothers. We covered each other’s blind spots. Here, I thought I was alone.
I had stereotypes about this place and its people. Just like they probably had some about me. At first, I kept to myself. But eventually, I started to see glimpses of the familiar in the people around me. Slowly, I let the armor come down. And just as slowly, I began to transform.
40 Years Later
Forty years ago, I made a call that changed my life.
It took me from G.E.D. to J.D., from Juvenile delinquent on probation to Commissioner of Juvenile Justice. Today, I get to walk into schools, courtrooms, and conference halls as “The Hope Dealer.” I’ve been blessed to share my story in the ballroom of a castle in the Swiss Mountains, testify before the United States Congress, perform before audiences of thousands and published books. At Berea I found a partner who was willing to stand beside me through some of the most tragic and sometimes self-destructive moments during my fight be more. And together we have raised two amazing sons.
But none of it could have unfolded like this if John Cook, Director of admissions hadn’t looked beyond the surface of a poorly written application at see the scared boy who was just brave enough to pick up the phone and call, collect. When he pulled my file from the “I don’t think so” stack, I hope he was thinking “maybe this one will prove me right.”
Berea College didn’t just accept me. They invested in me. They dared to believe that my past didn’t define my future. And they gave me the space to become who I was meant to be.
Everyday since I’ve spent trying to ensure they never regret it.
But, it all started with a phone call, a question, and a chance.
