Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

It’s been 49 years since a New York City police officer shot and killed 15-year-old Randolph Evans returning from the store with last-minute items for his mother’s Thanksgiving Day spread in their Brooklyn apartment in 1976. But his name and legacy lived on at the 46th Annual Randolph Evans Memorial Scholarship Awards Ceremony on June 28 at the historic House of the Lord Pentecostal Church in Brooklyn.

Nine high school students received the $1000 scholarships named for the slain youth.
“This year, Randy would have been celebrating his 64th birthday,” said Dr. Karen S. Daughtry, coordinator of the scholarship’s awards ceremony. “We keep his memory alive by celebrating the lives of young people who exhibit all of the attributes that Randy possessed and who have the opportunity to actualize the wonderful possibilities denied to Randy.”
The 2025 Randolph Evans Scholarship awardees are:

• Doniele Brown, W.H. Maxwell High School, who studies biology and business at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.
• Marin Clarke, Institute for Collaborative Education, who will study political science at Vanderbilt University.
• Myles Andrew Daughtry, Seton Hall Preparatory School, who will study music and business at Morehouse College.
• Suri Dubois, W.H. Maxwell High School, who will study communications and business management at Baruch College, City of New York University.
• Akil Francis, Brooklyn Lab Charter School, who will study psychology and counseling at University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
• Amali Johnson, Teaneck High School, who will study health sciences at Howard University.
• Makayla Latson, Success Academy High School of Liberal Arts, who will study political science at the University of Delaware.
• Skylar Renee Moore, Toms River High School, who will study political science at Hofstra University.
• Akilah Turner, Brooklyn High School of the Arts, who will study mathematics at Coppin State University.
  The awardees receive half of their scholarship at the awards ceremony and the second half upon completion of their first year of college.
  Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, a Randolph Evans Scholarship alum, sent a video message of congratulations to the 2025 awardees, as did New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
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  Brooklyn Deputy Borough President the Rev. Kimberly Council encouraged the students in a rousing keynote address that, among other things, urged them to stay on track at school by choosing associates who shared their “character, cadence, competency, capacity, and choice” to achieve.
• Former Congressman Ed Townes, an initial member of the scholarship’s board of directors; and Russell Evans, Randolph’s brother, also congratulated the scholars on their achievements and encouraged them to persevere.
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  The Rev. Dr. Herbert Daughtry, Presiding National Minister Emeritus of the House of the Lord Churches and chair of award’s board, shared a brief history how of the scholarship came to be. Randy Evans’ killing was one in a stretch of police killing of young Black boys in the 1970s, he said, rehearsing a list of similar killings.
• The community was very upset about Randy’s killing; but when Robert Torsney, the killer cop, was acquitted a year later and sent to Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital for specious epileptic condition, something had to be done, he said.
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  “After exhausting numerous attempts to get a fair hearing of the case in the courts, Jitu Weusi, Sam Pinn Sr., City Councilman Al Vann, and the late Mrs. Annie Brannon, the mother of Randolph Evans—who’ve all since made their transitions—and I developed a strategy of protest and boycott of certain stores in the Downtown Brooklyn area to draw citywide attention and to enlist the public support of the Downtown Brooklyn business community in the demand for justice,” Rev. Daughtry said. “And we won.”
  
• Several of the area’s large department stores, including Martin’s and EJ Korvette, closed not long after the targeted boycott. However, Abraham & Strauss, then Downtown Brooklyn’s marquee department store, agreed to fund the scholarship for its first five years and extended that financial commitment an additional five years because of the program’s success.
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  For the past 36 years, the community itself has raised funds for the scholarship. The 46th Annual Randolph Evans Awards Journal featuring the 2025 scholars, updates on the 2024 awardees and other important information about the grant and its community sponsors is available from The House of the Lord Church, 415 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn, NY 10017, ksdmin@gmail.com.