A-MAN Press Coverage
A-MAN's many years of community outreach and service have not gone unnoticed. The following are a selection of press articles covering our activities and programs.
KTLA News
Channel 5
August, 2005
Stan Chambers features A-MAN, Inc. and the International Science and Discovery Learning Center (ISD&L).
PBS
Channel 28
July, 2005
The Life and Times show with Tony Guinyard. A-MAN, Inc. and the ISD&L are highlighted in-depth.
Dr. Charles J. Lang, Black Scientist, Posthumously Honored for Aerospace Contributions
L.A. Watts Times
August 19, 2004
Hildreth and Dr. Bettye Davis Walker, founders of The African American Male Achievers Network, Inc. (A-MAN) and International Science Discovery and Learning Center (ISD&L) honor Dr. Lang at the ISD&L Center in Inglewood.
In 1963, he produced an award-winning color filmstrip, "Equal Opportunity in Space Science," which was hailed as a groundbreaking concept in audio-visual media. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) used it in publicity campaigns and distributed it to elementary and high schools across the country.
In 1965, with an eye on emerging opportunities in the aerospace industry created by the civil rights movement, Lang co-founded the Watts Skills Center, and devised a science and electronics-based curriculum to prepare minorities and women for these types of careers.
By 1977, Lang was invited by NASA to recruit minorities and women astronauts for assignments aboard space shuttles. Less than a year later, through his efforts, Dr. Ronald E. McNair and Majors Guion S. Bluford, Jr. and Frederick D. Gregory became pioneering African American astronauts. As a tribute to this quiet effectiveness on behalf of minorities, Lang was given the medal McNair wore in space.
Many were in attendance to join in this momentous occasion including his wife, Agatha Lang, and one of his four children, Dr. Khadijah Lang, a medical doctor who practices in South Los Angeles.
ABC News
Channel 7
October 2003
A-MAN, Inc. and the ISD&L are featured with Mark Brown and Michelle Tuzee and narrated by Henry Alfarro.
A Bridge Between Black Students and Success in Science
Los Angeles Times
June 17, 2000
"Westchester High School senior Rahim Miller, 18, had just returned to campus after taking first place in a national math competition.
A group of his fellow students were unimpressed. They told him that he should forget about, "that math stuff" and meet them after school when they "would give him something to smoke."
"OK," Miller calmly told them. "But first you come with me to my science center, and we'll analyze what it is that you're smoking."
The students then decided that they would be better off leaving Miller alone.
Retired laser scientist Hildreth "Hal" Walker and his wife, Bettye, a retired public school principal, love telling that story. For them it illustrates the kind of confidence Miller developed through his involvement in the International Science Discovery and Learning Center they founded eight years ago...
...Since 1996, the center has placed four of its students each year as interns in UCLA's department of molecular medicine.
The center is also working with two schools for farm children in the Republic of South Africa, and it has developed partnerships with UCLA, Caltech and the Smithsonian Institution.
1999 President's Service Awards Citationist
Points of Light Foundation
“Hildreth ‘Hal’ Walker, Jr., LOS ANGELES, CA -- joined with his wife Bettye to establish the African-American Male Achievers Network, Inc., (A-MAN) which is dedicated to the nurturing of young African-American children with special emphasis in science and math.”
Businesses Sponsor Science in the City
Pamela Wheaton Shorr for Office.com
September 22, 2000
Creative corporate aid helps an urban science center expand.
“Hildreth ‘Hal’ Walker knows what it means to shoot for the moon. His lunar laser-ranging experiment - which used lasers to improve distance measurement between the earth and the moon - was the only active experiment conducted during the Apollo 11 lunar landing and is now on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institute.
Walker's orbit is a bit closer to home these days. But he's still reaching for the moon with his nonprofit International Science and Discovery Center, which he co-founded with his wife, Bettye Davis Walker, a retired elementary school principal. The center serves the urban community of Inglewood, Calif., and has grown rapidly with support from the business community, including free rent from Wells Fargo, a California bank.
The Walkers, also co-founders of A-MAN, the African-American Male Achievers Network, have nurtured the science center from its roots in a pilot project that Walker's wife began 14 years ago while a school principal in Compton, Calif. With funding from Wells Fargo and other businesses - Shell Oil, TRW, Boeing and Bank of America - the program has expanded to include satellite centers in South Africa, as well as one right in the shadow of Walker's display at the Smithsonian, which debuted earlier this year. The Walkers plan on expanding to 200 centers across the nation by 2010.”
NASA experiment launched in honor of late solar physicist Art Walker
Dawn Levy for The Stanford Report (Stanford University)
May 8, 2002
“…A few days after the launch, on May 4, Art Walker's contributions as an African American scientist were honored at UCLA. The African-American Male Achievers Network (A-MAN), which formed to promote K-12 African American boys in the sciences and has since branched out to include girls, hosted the ceremony, which was attended by some of Walker's family members, a former student and about 350 other attendees. A nonprofit group, Permission to Dream, used the occasion to donate a 90-millimeter telescope to Fezeka High School in South Africa, making it the first black school in that country to own such an instrument.” [Full Article]
A-MAN, Inc. Achievers Celebrate the Tenth Anniversary Tribute to Mayor Tom Bradley
California Crusader News
Vol. 8 No. 61, Oct. 3, 2002
“The 10th Annual A-MAN Recognition Dinner was held this summer at the Tom Bradley Center on the Campus of U.C.L.A.. The Event consisted of the formal presentation of the girls and boys who are achievers ages 5 through 18. Their role models, who are ladies and gentlemen employed in a variety of professions from the medical field to aeronautics, were presented by the students.”
Holman Christian Education Technology Center for Science and the Arts
The United Methodist Review, Bellringer Edition
Volume 19, Number 21
“…A-MAN will partner with the Traveling Space Museum led by Ivor Dawson, founder and new Holman Church member. The purpose is to deliver science and technology curriculum and interactive educational content to attract youth and adults.”
