HistoryMakers to Visit BCC

HistoryMakers Billy Martin and Terry Jones will be speaking to BCC students on Wednesday, September 27th. Their visit is a part of the Back To School With The HistoryMakers program that provides students with direct contact with black leaders. Messers. Martin and Jones will personally recount their own school experiences; reflect upon the struggles they encountered, on their paths to success; and encourage students to commit to high achievement, and successful college entry and matriculation. Each year approximately 500 HistoryMakers go back to school in 77 cities and 35 states. TheHistoryMakers, the nation’s largest African American video oral history archive, is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit dedicated to recording and preserving the personal histories of well-known and unsung African Americans. The Library of Congress serves as the permanent repository for The HistoryMakers Collection.

Billy Martin, Esq.

• Attorney General Eric Holder describes him as “sophisticated” and a “good tactician.”
• It’s been a long time since Billy Martin, 57, stood in a Mississippi courtroom to represent a White Philadelphia corporate client, and the judge, thinking that because Martin was Black he must be the defendant, started to address Martin’s client rather than him
• Martin’s clients also have included former U.S. senator Larry Craig, the Idaho Republican who pleaded guilty in 2007 to misdemeanor disorderly conduct after a sex sting in a men’s restroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport....Craig paid a $575 fine and and missing intern Chandra Levy's parents.
• He was an average student, with modest aspirations, who had to work hard for his grades,
• Father worked in steel mill, mother worked as a cook and housekeeper for a nearby family
• He got a work permit at 12 and began caddying at a country club.
• He saved his money and enrolled at Howard University, returning home during semester breaks to work in the mills to pay his tuition.
• He was the only one of the eight siblings to graduate from college
• How does the Pennsylvanian want to be remembered? "As a good man, a good lawyer and as someone who cares about his family."
• In high school, Martin believed his ability as a basketball player and track star would land him a scholarship at a top-notch university. When it didn’t, he found himself at the local community college with an uncertain future.
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Terry Jones

Terry Jones is a founder and general partner of Syncom, a group of telecommunications and media venture capital funds. Jones says his engineering training at Trinity developed his skills in math, analytical thinking, and the scientific approach to reaching conclusions—assets for any businessperson. Moreover, studying engineering in a liberal arts environment enabled him to explore broad topics, issues, and problems that math and science couldn’t solve.

Jones, one of only three African American students in his class, became the founder of Trinity’s first black student organization. In the spring of 1968, Jones and his cohorts gained campus fame for their takeover of Williams Memorial. The sit-in was staged to show support for the creation of scholarships for disadvantaged students from the inner city. After Mr. Jones earned an M.B.A from Harvard, he headed for Africa, where he helped start a savings-and-loan institution in Kenya and other ventures.

With a mission to diversify the ownership of media and telecom in the United States, Herb, along with his long-time partners Terry Jones, Duane McKnight and the Syncom team, adopted a winning approach by investing in deals other venture capital firms refused, and sharing the risks and rewards of their investments with other minority venture capitalists through syndication-style investments.

he gatekeeper for Black entrepreneurs in the broadcast industry.  He was so dedicated to opening that door wider and wider, single-handedly opening doors of entry to minority broadcast owners.