Meet the white valedictorian of a historically black college

Joshua Packwood is the first white valedictorian in an all black college. Before Packwood was born, his father was in a motorcycle accident that left him unable to walk or talk. He was a troubled child that always got in trouble. When he was 11, he decided to leave home because his dad had been moved to a home and his mum's new boyfriend was abusive, so he bounced from one home to another, briefly staying with friends and family he began to rebel. He was expelled from two different schools and had a few minor brushes with the law.



When he was 13, Packwood had just stolen a bike when he ran into Timothy Jones, a middle school classmate who considered Packwood "a troublemaking punk." Slowly, Jones, who is black, and Packwood got to know each other better. One day, Packwood was coming out of detention and missed his bus. He needed a place to stay so he asked Jones if he could spend the night at his house. Jones "very reluctantly" agreed, Packwood recalls. Each night that week, Packwood asked if he could stay another night until finally Jones' parents decided to take him in. They bought him clothes and a bed to sleep on.

"They treated me just like Tim," Packwood said, "As if I had been with them since birth."

                   Packwood with Shannon Joyner


The Joneses lived in  a lower-middle class suburb outside of Kansas City. Eartha "Mama" Jones was a stay-at-home mom, who occasionally worked as a part-time salesperson at a mall. Barry Jones, Sr., was a warehouse manager at Grainger, the industrial supply company.


"They got me focused, playing sports, focusing on my grades," Packwood said. "Having that structure, having that family there...it had a huge impact on me."


In addition to sports and school, the boys sang in a choir, played video games and made up their own rap lyrics. The Jones family "treated me just like one of their kids -- punishment, love and all," Packwood said. The results were transformative. "I went from being expelled the previous year, to being the top student at the school and getting all these accolades," Packwood said. He lived with the Jones family for about a year, before moving in with his grandmother. But Packwood still spent almost every day at the Joneses and, of course, with Tim. By then, Packwood was about to start his freshman year at a predominantly black high school, which he described as "very, very poor."

The majority of the students, including Packwood -- received free breakfast and lunch. Academically, he excelled and was a star athlete, playing varsity football, wrestling, track, and cross country.

Packwood's experiences led him to want to major in African-American studies in college. So a guidance counselor suggested he consider Morehouse College, one of the most iconic historically black colleges in the United States. He was accepted to Columbia, Stanford and Morehouse but he opted for Morehouse because they recruited him aggressively.


 "People were concerned that I would be sacrificing a great education and opportunities to gain a unique experience that was not guaranteed to be uniquely good," he said.


He said when Morehouse contacted him he was a bit confused, Packwood pointed the dean to the section on his application that noted that his race is white. It made no difference. The school continued to woo Packwood, in part, with an academic scholarship because of his high grades in high school.


He needed the aid, but Packwood was conflicted.


"There was a part of me that was thinking, "Am I taking the scholarship away from another student? Am I getting this purely because I'm going to be the token white guy on campus?" Ultimately, Packwood accepted Morehouse's offer. "There is literally only one place like Morehouse on the entire planet, which is predominantly black, all male, so for me to get that experience and have that perspective was really the key differentiator," he said. Packwood's experience at Morehouse included exposure to a wide diversity of blackness and black cultures, something that, despite having grown up "very much immersed and involved in part of the black community," Packwood said he had never seen.



Packwood, who eventually majored in economics, excelled at Morehouse. And in 2008, he became the school's first white valedictorian.

Now he's college educated, married, a father of two and he runs a successful hedge fund in Manhattan.


"Economically now, I'm at the top, and so from one perspective I recognize that I'm very fortunate, and a lot of that is white privilege," said Packwood.



CNN