Sonya Redd remembers her first ACT-SO competition. The Rev. Jesse Jackson introduced a young teen abandoned by her family and living alone in a shell of a house in New York City.
“An NAACP family found that young lady and took her into their home,” said Redd, the State Conference NAACP ACT-SO chairperson. “The next year, she came to ACT-SO and won $7,000 in awards and scholarships. That blew my mind. I said we got to have this here in New Jersey.”