Youngest Ever African-American Eagle Scout Earns Honor at Age 12
There are six new sets of bleachers at Kletzsch Park in WI and a 12-year-old is responsible. It’s a project that’s helping him make history.
Standing next to the bleachers he helped build in October, James Hightower III recited the Scout Oath: “On my honor I will do my best, to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.”
His father, James Hightower II, told TODAY’S TMJ4’s Jesse Ritka how much being in The Boy Scouts means to his family, “We believe in scouting. Where else can a young man, at the age of 10 or 11 start a oath by saying ‘on my honor?’ It starts with saying ‘on my honor’ and those are very powerful words and words to live by.”
They’re words that the Glen Hills seventh-grader takes seriously. James joined the Boy Scouts when he was 8 years old and now he is the youngest African-American Eagle Scout in the country. An accomplishment the now 12-year-old is proud of.
Marissa Alexander, Out On Bail, Spends Thanksgiving With Her Children
It’s been a year-and-a-half since Marissa Alexander felt a Florida breeze whip across her face as a free woman. But although she’s not yet technically “free,” Alexander was able to spend Thanksgiving at home with her children after a posted a $200,000 bond.
Alexander’s case rose to national prominence in the midst of the George Zimmerman trial, when the public discovered that this young mother of three was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot in 2010 near her 245 pound husband as he was about to attack, something he had done on many occasions. While Alexander, 33, sat in a Florida jail cell, Zimmerman stalked the streets as a free man after killing an unarmed 17-year-old, Trayvon Martin. Many pointed out the stark differences in the cases, and pointed to the fact that Alexander is Black and Zimmerman is (half) white as the reason for the widely divergent treatment under Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law.
Alexander was able to join her three children on Thanksgiving after a three-judge appellate panel ruled that Alexander deserves a new trial because the judge handling her case did not properly instruct the jury regarding what is needed to prove self-defense.
