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James Richardson Receives Corona/East Elmhurst NAACP Youth Leadership Award for Service to His Community
Youth Leadership Award and scholarship recipient James Richardson, left, at Corona/East Elmhurst NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner in December with Youth Council co-advisor Duane Smothers and outgoing branch President Karen D. Blanding.
City Tech human services student James Richardson, 21, has been honored with the 2004 Youth Leadership Award from the Corona/East Elmhurst branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in recognition of his many years of service to his community. The award and a $1,000 scholarship, provided in memory of her mother by Julia Showery, a senior member of the branch, were presented at the organization’s Freedom Fund Dinner in December. Richardson is the youngest member and only youth also to have received the branch’s coveted President’s Award.
Richardson has been active in community service since the age of six. “My mother was a nurse at the time and a member of the 1199SEIU, the healthcare workers union,” he recalled. “We were part of a team that went to Washington, DC to lobby for both healthcare and labor law reform.”
His enthusiasm for community service continued in junior high school where he received the Principal’s Award for helping to make his school and surrounding community better places in which to learn and live. Richardson has never been afraid to speak up for his beliefs and passionately did so some years ago at a meeting of the Board of Education, after Karen D. Blanding, at the time a member of the Executive Committee of the Corona/East Elmhurst NAACP branch and later branch president, approached him and several friends on the street and asked if they’d be willing to talk publicly about the effects of the police presence in their high school.
After his appearance before the Board of Education, Richardson was invited to join the Corona/East Elmhurst branch of the NAACP. He has been an active member ever since and served for four years as president of the branch’s youth council, which he helped shape into one of the most active youth groups in the NAACP. The group has won numerous state, regional and national awards for programming and related activities.
“Karen Blanding has been a major motivating force in my life,” Richardson explained. “She has been a huge role model for me -- one of the people who really sparked my interest in community service and helped guide me to become the person I am today.”
A resident of Lefrak City in Queens, Richardson has won other awards for his service to his community, including Youth Leadership Awards from the Lefrak City Tenants Association and the Concerned African-Americans of Flushing. He is also a recipient of the prestigious Roy Wilkins Award, the highest honor a youth can receive from the NAACP, and has been saluted by the New York City Council for his impressive record of youth leadership and achievement.
Richardson is now a member of the adult division of the Corona/East Elmhurst NAACP as well as one of its most active members. He currently co-chairs the Youth Political Action Committee of the New York State Conference of NAACP Branches and is one of three members helping to organize young people from the different NAACP branches for a trip to Albany in March to lobby for issues important to youth and minorities statewide.
At City Tech, he is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in human services and is on the Dean’s List. Following completion of his education, Richardson intends to pursue a career as a community planner and to focus his energies on enhancing community awareness of its needs.
“The strength of a community depends on the level of awareness of the people who live in it,” he said. “I don’t believe that one person can change a whole community, but one person can help a community to change itself for the better. A person does this by helping people increase their awareness of community needs and how those needs can be met.”
Karen Blanding called Richardson "a natural leader, who is admired and respected by youth and adults alike throughout his neighborhood and the Borough of Queens. He has demonstrated exemplary leadership skills and continues to make the people of his community exceedingly proud of him and of his efforts on their behalf."
James Richardson spoke warmly of his mother, family, friends and fellow City Tech students and professors. “I don’t think my mother expected that I would go on to devote my life to community service when she took me to Washington, DC, 15 years ago. It’s certainly nothing she ever insisted that I do. Her purpose then was to broaden my horizons by exposing me to different ways of thinking about issues of concern to different people. I dearly appreciate my mother precisely because she always allowed me choices and encouraged me to make my own decisions and to make them freely.
“I am also blessed,” Richardson continued, “to have good friends and family members who have supported my community service interests and activities. I‘m also lucky to have the strong support of many of my fellow students and teachers at City Tech. Their encouragement is another motivating force in my life -- one that has helped keep me focused and on a positive track.”
