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Boyd Lewis says:

I don’t know about these particular kids, but a while back, I showed Gene Ferguson one of my photos of a larger group of kids and asked the same question. The former youth director of Emmaus House began pointing: “She’s dead. Gang thing. He became a policeman. He’s at Reidsville for drug dealing. She’s with City Hall doing human resources. He died. So did he. This one went to Georgia State for a semester but dropped out and is a construction laborer in Cherokee County” and so it went. Summerhill tended to kill its children. Atlanta’s worst slum had no mercy. With the gentrification south and east of Turner Field, the community now has no memory of what went before. And so it goes.

Sandee says:

If I remember correctly, the boy sitting in the front holding the football is Tony Willingham. Through Emmaus House he was given the opportunity to attend an A.B.C. (A Better Chance) high school up North, and then went on to college and became a teacher. http://www.abetterchance.org/abetterchance.aspx?pgID=959

The bootstraps and extra tugs that Emmaus House offered did produce some success stories. Sadly, they may have been the exceptions. But it is also a matter of degree. Going to college for a semester and becoming a construction laborer or becoming a policeman might be a lot better than what their parents’ lives were like, or what their lives would have been without that support. And chances are that their offspring will do a lot better.

After I wrote the above, I looked at the photo again, and am not so sure that is Tony. Looks more like a Eubanks. But I am happy to tell Tony’s story anyway.