OMEGA LAMPLIGHTERs: The Village is changing the narrative

By Justin Hill

Click to access the photo gallery from this event

I walked into Jake Gaither Gymnasium Saturday night with my camera and a question that I had honestly been carrying for a while.

Why are these kids so interested in stepping?

I grew up in Tallahassee playing football and baseball. Athletics were a major part of my childhood. My brother and I, along with most of the boys we ran with, were drawn to sports. We competed. We practiced. We wanted to wear the uniform and be part of the team.

Stepping was never something that would have crossed our minds.

That is not a criticism. It is simply the truth about the environment I grew up in and what we considered cool as boys. Even though I have known about the Omega Lamplighters for years, I have never completely understood why so many boys from this generation seemed drawn to an organization where stepping was such a visible part of what they did.

Saturday night answered my question. They are not coming for the stepping. They are coming for the brotherhood.

The stepping matters. It requires discipline, timing, confidence and teamwork. It gives the young men something to learn together and an opportunity to perform in front of their families and community. It also connects them to the culture and traditions surrounding Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Incorporated.

But after sitting in that gym and watching everything happening around me, I realized that stepping is only one piece of something much larger.

Omega Lamplighters is not simply a step team. It is an organization and that distinction matters.

What I witnessed was an entire network of men, parents, volunteers and young people working toward the same goal. They are trying to positively influence boys through mentorship, leadership, accountability, exposure and brotherhood.

Lamplighter staff presenting the names of young men who have excelled in the classroom.

There were small children, teenagers, older young men and adult mentors. There were mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings and supporters filling the stands. Everywhere I looked, somebody was invested in the success of these boys. That was what moved me.

I was born and raised in Tallahassee, and I now serve this same city as a police officer. I have had the opportunity to see this community from several different perspectives. I know the good in Tallahassee. I also know what can happen when young people become disconnected from positive influences.

As a police officer, I have seen young people encounter the criminal justice system far too early. I have seen what happens when anger, guns, poor decisions and the wrong influences collide. I have seen families devastated by decisions that sometimes took only seconds to make. Those experiences make it impossible for me to sit inside a gym full of Black boys surrounded by positive adult influence and consider what I was watching insignificant.

Organizations like Omega Lamplighters matter because mentorship should not begin after a child is already in crisis. The best time to influence a young man is long before anybody is standing over him asking how everything went wrong.

It starts when he is five. It continues when he is nine. It matters when he is thirteen and trying to decide who he wants to become. It matters when he is sixteen and the opinions of his friends seem more important than almost anything his parents can tell him.

That is where an organization like this becomes powerful. Young people naturally pay attention to what other young people are doing. We often talk about peer pressure as if it is always negative, but it is not. The real question is what direction the pressure is pushing.

If your friends are joining something positive, positive behavior becomes normal. If the older boys you respect are Lamplighters, becoming a Lamplighter becomes appealing. If you see other boys performing, traveling, receiving recognition and being celebrated by hundreds of people, you may begin to want the same thing. Eventually, the organization becomes part of the culture surrounding the child. The boys begin influencing one another. There are plenty of bridges I do not want our children following each other off. This is not one o fthose bridges.

There was another part of Saturday night that stayed with me even more. It was the families. Jake Gaither Gymnasium was full of Black families who had given up part of their Saturday night because something positive was happening in the lives of their children. I wish more people could have seen that room.

There were both mothers and fathers supporting sons. There were men mentoring boys who may or may not have been their own children. Families were cheering, recording videos, taking pictures and celebrating. The amount of support in that gym was invigorating to my soul. It felt good to see that many Black people gathered for the same positive purpose.

Later that night, however, I could not stop thinking about how easily one act of violence could overshadow everything that had just happened. Hundreds of Black families could spend Saturday evening inside a gym investing in young men, and most of the city might never know it happened. Yet if one Black teenager shoots another Black teenager at 2:30 Sunday morning, that incident can quickly become the image people associate with our children and our community.

The shooting would deserve attention. Violence should never be ignored or minimized. But it should not be allowed to tell our entire story.

That gym was part of the story too. There are Black families all over Tallahassee who are working, parenting, teaching, coaching, mentoring, praying, correcting and sacrificing to raise children who will become productive adults.

They are not perfect families. They do not have perfect children. They are simply people trying to do life the right way. I believe we need to show that. That belief is a major reason I carry a camera.

I was not the official photographer Saturday night, so I spent most of the ceremony photographing from the stands. I tried to respect the photographers who were there to work the event. Still, I watched through my camera for the moments that said something about what was happening in that room.

The more I photographed, the clearer the story became.

This was never really about stepping.

It was about creating an environment where boys want to belong to something positive. It was about surrounding them with men who are willing to invest their time. It was about parents deciding that an organization like this deserves their support. It was about young men learning that leadership, discipline, brotherhood and achievement can become part of their identity.

Most importantly, it was evidence.

It was evidence that there are people in our community fighting for our boys long before anybody has to fight to save them.

There will always be difficult stories to tell about our community, and we should tell those stories truthfully.

But we have a responsibility to tell these stories too.

On Saturday night, inside a gymnasium on the campus of Florida A&M University, I watched a community wrap itself around a group of young Black boys.

I went there wondering why they wanted to step.

I left understanding why they wanted to belong.