Street Soldier: One Man's Struggle to Save a Generation, One Life at a Time

As a public school teacher, Joe Marshall grew sick and tired of watching his most promising students fall prey to the lure of gangs, drugs, and crime, and end up either dead or in prison. Finding that neither the justice nor school system seemed willing even to try to address the underlying problems--to give the kids the kind of information and assistance they really needed--he leapfrogged right over the system and co-founded the Omega Boys Club, based upon the belief that young people of the inner city want a way out of the life they're in, but just don't know how to get out. Since the club's inception in 1987, with a handful of kids in a community center basement, he and his small army of street soldiers have already helped 600 kids out of gang-banging and drug-dealing, and pushed, tutored, driven and even funded 140 inner-city kids into colleges around the country.

Four years ago, to direct kids at risk to the Boys Club, he started a weekly radio call-in program called "Street Soldiers" that is now broadcast throughout California to an audience of over 200,000. His callers ask tough questions about gangs, drugs, teen pregnancy, and the multiple pressures of life in the inner city today. "Street Soldiers" not only provides callers with a lifeline and listeners with a practical resource for hope, but has repeatedly averted gang warfare and stopped "payback" violence before they occurred.

Street Soldier is the story of Joe Marshall's success and, as virtually the only good news coming out of the inner city today, it is incumbent upon all of us--citizens, parents, legislators, and teachers--to listen. From Marshall's own college days in the turbulent sixties and his early years as an idealistic young teacher, the book moves to the heartbreaking lessons that compelled him to do something. Street Soldier then takes readers through the day-by-day trials and tribulations of his efforts in the `hood, searching for effective ways to convince gun-toting crack dealers and gang members to take pride in their race, take responsibility for their actions, and take charge of their lives. Along the way the book goes inside the minds and lives of a handful of the kids who transform themselves in the mast dramatic way possible--and a few who sadly cannot. In the end, Street Soldier is a call to each of us to help shape the future of this generation at risk, to help our children grow strong--to be street soldiers in our own communities.

Filled with tense confrontations and joyous celebrations, Street Soldier is an uplifting story by and about one man who makes a difference--and the cure his story may well provide for the cancer eating at our nation today.

Dr. Joseph E. Marshall, Jr. is the Executive Director and Co-founder of Omega Boys Club, a violence prevention organization that emphasizes academic achievement and non-involvement with drugs. Through this organization, founded in March of 1987, Marshall has helped send more than 180 young men and women to college supported by the Omega Boys Club Scholarship Fund. To date 69 Omegas have graduated from college.

With a growing list of success stories, the Omega Boys Club continues to receive national acclaim. Marshall, staff and members of the club have been profiled in the New Yorker Magazine, People Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Essence Magazine, CNN, the Disney Channel, CBS Evening News, The Today Show, McNeil Lehrer Report, the Oprah Winfrey Show, B.E.T. Tonight and the VIBE Television Show.

In 1990, Marshall was honored at the White House for his success in fighting drugs and crime in his community. He is currently a Planning Board Member of the Surgeon General's Report on Youth Violence and he is a former member of the Harvard University School of Public Health, Advisory Board for the Community Violence Prevention. In March 1997, Marshall received a bi-partisan salute from the United States Congress when he was presented with the Freedom Works Award by House of Representatives Majority Leader, Richard K. Armey, Republican of Texas and seconded by California Democrats Ron Dellums and Nancy Pelosi.

Marshall is the recipient of many national awards including, the 1994 "Genius Award" Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a 1994 Leadership Award from the Children's Defense Fund, and the 1996 Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Award from the National Education Association.

In April 1994, he, along with Denzel Washington, Quincy Jones, Spike Lee, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Robert Moses, Eddie Murphy and Benjamin Carson, M.D., received the Essence Award, honoring outstanding achievements by African American Men.

In addition to his work with Omega Boys Club, Marshall hosts the only nationally syndicated violence prevention call-in radio talk show in America, "Street Soldiers". The show allows youth to speak about pressing problems confronting their communities such as crime, gang and school violence, teenage pregnancy and drugs and receive practical solutions. The show has been hailed by Ken Auletta of New Yorker Magazine as "a model for how the entertainment industry can come to terms with violence."

Marshall is the author of the best-selling book Street Soldier, One Man's Struggle to Save a Generation, One Life at a Time, (Delacorte Press, May 1996) and he and the Club are the subject of a PBS documentary on violence prevention entitled Street Soldiers.

Joseph Marshall holds a dual Bachelor's Degree in Political Science and Sociology from the University of San Francisco; a Master of Arts in Education from San Francisco State University; and, a Doctorate in Psychology from Berkeley's Wright Institute in. He is currently on leave from the San Francisco Unified School District where he was employed as a teacher and administrator for twenty-five years.