Today was the last day I saw him.

Dakarai, a great student activist and friend, is probably my best explanation of why I am now pursuing a career in social justice. He grew up in inner Baltimore, on the West side. The time he spent there made him deftly aware of the inequalities of educational opportunities for those that “don’t matter.” School, he said, was a battleground and even getting there was like an obstacle course, so most of the time kids he knew never made it there (Baltimore currently only graduates 58 percent of its high school seniors, and 75 percent of all black male high schoolers in the city never finish high school, according to the Maryland Board of Education.) He was determined to make it, even though he had a learning disability, even though he had to “do a little dirt” to get money for books during the summer. And through all of this, he marched in protests against the war, educated his boys on the block about social issues, and spent time mentoring troubled youth so they didn’t make the same mistakes that he sometimes did. He did it, he said, because “Not knowing is what’s killing us in the first place.” Sadly, he was murdered in an alley behind his father’s apartment as he was packing his things to go back to Virginia State University for his last semester. But even in death he finished college, as VSU gave his parents his diploma posthumously. Dakarai, or “D” as we called him, was my friend and my guide through the real issues of the streets, and I’ll always thank him for that.