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I Was a DEI Boy Scout
DEI Stands for Definitely Earned It
I grew up in Minneapolis, MN, not the Blackest of American cities, yet we did have Black churches, two predominantly Black high schools, and two Black sections of town.
I attended a newly integrated elementary school and mostly grew up in a home on the Southside where Black families had only recently been allowed to purchase FHA homes due to redlining. Minneapolis, like many cities across America, was trying to undo some of the segregation that had previously defined it.
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) also had a history of segregation it was trying to undo. Robert Baden-Powell founded the Scouting movement in England. In 1909, Chicago publisher W. D. Boyce was visiting London, where he encountered a boy who came to be known as the Unknown Scout. Boyce was lost on a foggy street when an unknown Scout aided him, guiding him to his destination. The boy then refused Boyce’s tip, explaining that he was a Boy Scout and was merely doing his daily good turn. Boyce was inspired by his experience and incorporated the Boy Scouts of America on February 8, 1910.
The BSA never expressly excluded Black Boy Scouts; they followed the generally accepted practice of Jim Crow, separate and unequal. America’s first “Negro Boy Scout” troop was founded in 1911 in Elizabeth City, North…
