Our Black Sons Are in Crisis.
Who Will Pick Up the Baton?
Violence. Suicide. Drug Use. The hands of angry young Black males turned against Black girls. This is happening right now – in your city, on your block, possibly in your family. Team BMW is fighting back. But we can’t do it without you.
#1
Cause of death for Black males ages 15–34 is homicide
144%
Rise in Black youth suicide rates ages 10–17 from 2007–2020
1 in 3
Black women experience intimate partner violence from angry Black males
Three Crises. One Root Cause. One Solution.
Before we can fix what’s happening in our streets, our schools, and our relationships — we have to be honest about what Black males are facing.
Senseless Violence
Every 9 hours
A young Black male is murdered in America. Most perpetrators and victims know each other. The pipeline from broken households to violent streets runs directly through the absence of male identity formation. Boys without direction become Black males without restraint.
The Silent Epidemic: Suicide
144% increase
Suicide rates among Black youth ages 10–17 rose 144% from 2007 to 2020 — the fastest rise of any racial group. Suicide is now the 2nd leading cause of death for African Americans ages 15–24. Black males die by suicide at a rate more than 4 times that of Black females. Yet it remains the least talked-about crisis in our communities. Shame. Silence. No safe place to grieve. These young Black males are drowning in pain nobody taught them how to process.
Domestic Violence Against Black Girls
Too many
Angry young Black males who never learned emotional regulation, accountability, or how to love — are turning their pain into violence against Black girls and women. The crisis of broken Black manhood bleeds into broken Black womanhood. This cycle stops with us.
“Which person is worse, the one who created the problem? Or the one who knows of the problem but does nothing to fix it?”
The Research Is Unambiguous. The Crisis Is Real.
This isn’t anecdote. This is peer-reviewed science and federal data documenting what Black families already know in their gut — and what too many are burying their sons over.
University of Georgia Study
1 in 3
A University of Georgia study found that 1 in 3 rural Black males reported suicidal ideation or thoughts of death in the past two weeks. Childhood adversity and racial discrimination were identified as primary drivers — eroding the ability to trust others and build community. Isolation, researchers found, is the bridge between pain and death.
“We found when Black males were exposed to childhood adversity, they may develop an internal understanding of the world as somewhere they are devalued.” — Michael Curtis, UGA
The Pew Charitable Trusts
144%
Pew’s research confirms the Black adolescent suicide rate is rising faster than any other racial or ethnic group — a 144% increase among ages 10–17 from 2007 to 2020. Black youth are significantly less likely to receive mental health care, and their depression often goes unrecognized because it shows up as anger and aggression rather than sadness — and gets met with discipline instead of help.
“We must gain a better understanding of this trend to design effective interventions for this population.” — Dr. Michael Lindsey, NYU
The System Is Failing Them
Only 32%
Research shows that only 32% of young people who die by suicide had a mental health visit in the year before their death — yet 78% interacted with the health care system. The warning signs were there. No one was trained to see them. Fewer than half of Black youth seen in emergency rooms for self-harm ever follow up with outpatient care.
The system missed them. Team BMW won’t.
“The quality of our relationships is what sustains human beings. For people who have suicidal thoughts, there’s this sense that no one knows me, nobody cares about me, there’s nobody there for me. I am alone.”
Team BMW Is the Protective Factor.
Researchers agree the #1 protective factor against suicide is healthy relationships — having someone to call when the darkness closes in. Team BMW builds exactly that: a structured brotherhood of mentors, clergy, veterans, and accomplished men who refuse to let young Black males disappear into silence.
When you pick up a baton, you are funding those relationships. You are funding the phone call that saves a life.
Sources: University of Georgia (2024) · The Pew Charitable Trusts (2024) · CDC National Vital Statistics System
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline).
The Man Behind the Movement
Dr. Carter, isn’t theorizing from a distance. He has spent over 3,000 nights in the field — in Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, and across America’s most challenged communities — listening, researching, and building real solutions grounded in a doctoral research framework.
A former two-time All-American collegiate football player turned community transformation architect — Dr. Carter’s Household-First Model addresses the four root pillars: violence reduction, literacy, father engagement, and self-esteem. This isn’t theory. This is evidence-based intervention at scale.
Why a Baton?
In a relay race, no runner finishes alone. The baton is passed. The race is won as a team — or lost when someone drops it.
Someone Ran Before You
Harriet. MLK. Thurgood. Fannie Lou. They passed a baton to us. The question is — what are we doing with it?
The Baton Has Been Dropped
Violence, suicide, and domestic abuse are signs that too many young Black males never received the baton of identity, purpose, or positive manhood.
You Can Pick It Up
When you purchase a Digital Baton, you fund the programs, mentors, and curriculum that put that baton in a young Black male's hands.
They Run the Next Leg
Equipped with discipline, literacy, and identity — these young Black males become the ones who protect, not destroy, their communities.
What Picking Up Your Baton Does
Your Digital Baton purchase is more than a symbol — it’s a statement. It tells the next generation: I see you. I’m investing in you. You matter.
Funds from Baton purchases directly support Team BMW’s national solutions to address senseless violence, suicide, domestic violence, and drug use amongst young black males.
Mental Health & Self-Esteem
We create safe spaces where young Black males can process pain, build identity, and learn that asking for help is strength — not weakness. This is how we stop the suicide surge.
Literacy Intervention
Young Black males reading below grade level become adults with limited options — and limited options breed desperate choices. Your baton funds reading programs targeting 8th–12th grade proficiency.
Father Engagement
An engaged father is the single greatest predictor of a young male's success. Where biological fathers are absent, we connect young Black males with accomplished mentors — clergy, veterans, businessmen, tradesmen — who show them what a man looks like.
They Were in Their Prime. We Lost Them Anyway.
These are not statistics. These are young Black males who had everything the world said they needed to make it — talent, fame, opportunity, a future — and still could not outrun the pain no one helped them carry.
If it can happen to them, it is happening to young Black males in your city right now who have none of those resources.
Age 24 · 2025
Marshawn Kneeland
Dallas Cowboys defensive end. Died November 2025 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound following a police chase. Reports indicated a history of mental health struggles that went unaddressed beneath the surface of a professional football career. The league mourned. But the warning signs had been there.
Source: Fox 4 News Dallas
Age 25 · 2026
Rondale Moore
Minnesota Vikings wide receiver. Found dead in Indiana in February 2026. Local police reported the death as a suspected suicide. A gifted athlete with NFL seasons ahead of him — silenced at 25. His death sent shockwaves through the league and reignited urgent conversations about mental health in professional sports.
Source: WLKY News
Age 24 · 2025
Kyren Lacy
Former LSU wide receiver and NFL draft prospect. His death in April 2025 in Houston was ruled a suicide. Standing on the edge of the biggest opportunity of his life — and still, the weight of invisible pain proved heavier than all of it.
Source: Video Report
Age 26 · 2022
Ian Alexander Jr.
Son of Academy Award-winning actress Regina King. A talented musician and artist who died by suicide at 26. Fame, family love, and opportunity surrounded him. It was not enough without the internal foundation that turns pain into purpose. His mother’s grief became a public reminder that this crisis spares no one.
Source: E! Online
Age 25 · 2025
Lil Poppa
Jacksonville rapper with a devoted fanbase, gone at 25. His music gave voice to the pain of young Black males navigating streets, trauma, and a world that rarely offers them grace. Fans and friends mourned publicly. But the ache behind his lyrics had been there all along — and no one knew how to reach it in time.
Source: First Coast News
The Bigger Story
These five names represent thousands of young Black males we will never see on a headline. The crisis is not confined to stadiums and stages. It is in classrooms, barbershops, living rooms, and street corners across America — right now, today. Watch the full report.
Source: WLKY News
Every one of these young Black males had people who loved them. What they didn't have was Team BMW.
A structured brotherhood. Mentors who check in. A framework for processing pain. A rite of passage that says: your life has value, your future has purpose, and you are not alone.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988
Real Transformation — Watch Jeremy's Story
This is what happens when a young Black male receives the baton of identity, structure, and belief.
Jeremy’s Story — Team Black Males Winning
“The quality of our relationships is what sustains human beings. For people who have suicidal thoughts, there’s this sense that no one knows me, nobody cares about me, there’s nobody there for me. I am alone.”
This Is What Intervention Looks Like.
When the system fails a young Black male — and one man refuses to let that be the end of his story.
From Coloring Pages to Certifications
Devonte Hughes attended Ennis Independent School District in Texas. From kindergarten through sixth grade, while his classmates were learning to read, Devonte was handed coloring pages.
He was dyslexic. The district knew it. And the district didn’t care. No intervention. No specialist. No plan. Just a young Black male quietly falling further behind every single year — invisible inside a system that was supposed to protect him.
This is how the pipeline to failure is built — not always with violence, but sometimes with silence, neglect, and a coloring book handed to a child who deserved a reading lesson.
Then Mr. Bruce walked in.
As Devonte’s mentor, Mr. Bruce did what the school district refused to do — he saw Devonte. He identified the dyslexia for what it was: not a disability that defined a ceiling, but a challenge that demanded the right support. He intervened. He advocated. He refused to let the system’s failure become Devonte’s identity.
That single act of mentorship — one man choosing to pick up the baton — changed the entire trajectory of a young Black male’s life.
Devonte Hughes Today — Age 29
Underwater Welding
Certified Professional
Cybersecurity
Currently in College
From Coloring Pages
To a Future He Owns
The same young Black male the Ennis Independent School District handed a coloring page to is now holding certifications, sitting in a college classroom, and building a career in one of the fastest-growing fields in America. That is what one mentor with a baton can do.
Hear Devonte’s parents share what this journey looked like from the inside — and what Mr. Bruce’s intervention meant for their family.
Devonte Hughes & His Family — A Story of Intervention, Mentorship & Transformation
Who Should Pick Up the Baton?
If any of these describe you — this is your moment.
Black Women & Mothers
You love Black males deeply. You have watched sons, brothers, nephews, and partners struggle. Pick up the baton for the Black males in your life and the next generation.
Faith Communities
The church has always been the backbone of Black liberation. If you believe in redemption, restoration, and resurrection — this is applied theology. Pick up the baton.
Community Leaders & Activists
You've marched. You've posted. You've grieved. Now fund the solution. Team BMW turns your outrage into action with a proven, national infrastructure.
Corporations & Philanthropists
Diversity commitments don't end at hiring. Invest in the pipeline that creates the Black males you want at the table. Partner with Team BMW nationally.
Everyone Who Is Tired of Funerals
You don't need a title. You don't need a platform. You just need to be done watching young Black males die on the news and do nothing. Pick. Up. The. Baton.
Parents With A Daughter
You fear the moment an angry young Black male who was never taught better puts his hands on your daughter. Invest in the solution that teaches young males that real men protect Black women — they don't harm them.
Choose Your Baton — Join the Movement
Every color. Every community. One mission. Pick the baton that represents your commitment. Digital Batons start at $18.65 and directly fund Team BMW’s national empowerment programs for young Black males.
The Purple Baton is for every Black woman who has been hurt by an angry Black male who was never taught better. When you pick up The Purple Baton, you’re saying: “I’m investing in the Black males who will protect us — not harm us.”
The Weight: Dr. Carter Speaks at Another Funeral
Before you pick up your baton, understand what we’re really asking you to carry.
He is delivering the eulogy for a 22-year-old Black male who died of a fentanyl overdose. Hundreds of young Black males attended. He spoke directly to them — because the next funeral could be theirs.
This is why we can’t wait. This is why Standing on Business™ exists.
Dr. Carter’s Eulogy: Speaking Truth to Young Black Males at a Friend’s Funeral
You just watched Dr. Carter speak to hundreds of young Black males at their friend’s funeral. Standing on Business™ exists so he doesn’t have to give that speech again.
Will you pick up your baton?
Voices of the Movement
Romeo — actor and influencer — speaks to why this work matters and why now is the time to act.
Romeo on Empowering Young Black Males
The Research That Built Standing on Business™
Standing on Business™ is not a program built on good intentions. It is a solution built on years of field research, doctoral study, and evidence-based intervention rooted in the communities where the crisis is most acute — the I-94 Corridor of Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Dr. Carter, didn’t study this crisis from a university office. He lived inside it — spending over 3,000 nights in the field, building trust with families, documenting what works, and designing a Rite of Passage framework backed by data and grounded in the Household-First Model: “Often public failure is preceded by a private failure in the household.”
The Research That Built Standing on Business™ — Bruce C. Carter, Ph.D.
Doctoral Research Foundation
Standing on Business™ is grounded in Bruce C. Carter, Ph.D.'s doctoral dissertation — a rigorous academic framework studying young Black males in single-mother households and the interventions that produce lasting change in behavior, literacy, and self-worth.
Field-Tested in the Hardest Places
The I-94 Corridor — Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha, Wisconsin — served as the primary research geography. These are communities where violence, poverty, and absent fathers converge. If it works there, it works everywhere.
A Replicable National Model
What began as community-based research has been engineered into a scalable, replicable Rite of Passage platform designed to reach young Black males ages 12–26 across all eight of Team BMW's target markets — nationally.
“Standing on Business™ is the culmination of research, sacrifice, and an unshakeable belief that every young Black male deserves a structured path to manhood — regardless of what household he came from.”
— Bruce C. Carter, Ph.D., Founder · Team Black Males Winning
Choose Your Baton — Join the Movement
Want to do more than stand on the sideline? Get equipped with the tools and wear the mission.
The Race Is Not Over. But the Baton Is on the Ground.
Every day we wait is a young Black male we lose — to a bullet, to despair, or to the prison of his own unmet potential. Team BMW is on the track, running hard. But we need you to pick up the baton.
$18.65 is less than a lunch out. It’s less than a tank of gas. It is, however, exactly what it costs to say: “I’m in. I’m not giving up on our sons.”
Or donate directly at teambmw.org/donate