We dedicate this year to my dear friend Vernon,” said NYC ACT-SO Executive Director Anton Tomlinson, who founded the NYC ACT-SO chapter in 1987 with Benjamin Duster IV, a direct descendant of justice crusader and journalist Ida B.
In honor of Vernon Jarrett, NYC ACT-SO plans to add a journalism category to the Humanities offerings in 2006. The top three winners in each category receive a gold medal with $500 in cash, silver medal with $300, and bronze medal with $200. The gold medallists will advance (among 1,200 gold medallists from local competitions across the country) to the national NAACP ACT-SO Olympics of the Mind to be held July 7-11 in Milwaukee, where prizes are a gold medal with $2,000; silver with $1,500; and bronze with $1,000. Every national medallist also receives a fully-loaded laptop computer!
NYC-ACT-SO students graduate from high school and 85 percent go on to college. Participants’ road to success and the Olympics of the Mind competition begins at the start of the school year with intensive enrichment workshops beginning in November. A kick-off rally is held in January, and the enrichment workshops, conducted on Saturdays at Manhattan’s P.S. 84, 32 W. 92nd Street (between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West), continue through April.
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