Kids reporting to an elementary school in Hartford, Conn., for the first day of classes got a truly remarkable welcome. (Photo: Keith Claytor/www.timefrozen.com)

Students walking into Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Hartford, Conn., on Aug. 25 got a welcome fit for a hero. More than 100 men lined the sidewalk in front of the school offering a touching show of support, cheering and high-fiving the children as they entered the building on their first day of classes.

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“Kids were running out of the bus to smack our hands like they were running down a football field,” one of the rally organizers, DeVaughn Ward, tells Yahoo Parenting. “It was amazing to see them so fired up to go to school and meet their teachers.”

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Photo: Keith Claytor/www.timefrozen.com



And that was exactly how the neighborhood men hoped that the kids in this inner-city school would respond when they hatched their greeting plan (inspired by a similar event in Atlanta), just two days prior. Ward and local pastor AJ Johnson asked black men to welcome the kids at school via a Facebook group they created called “Calling All Brothers.”

“In an urban community, people say that black men [aren’t] valued or there aren’t enough black men doing something,” Johnson explained to A Plus. “I wanted to prove everyone wrong.” They wanted to do it in style too, noted Johnson, who requested that all of the adults wear the clothes that they typically don for work, be it suit and tie, uniform, or scrubs. “The way the media portrays us is that we’re thugs,” he said. “We don’t know how to dress, we don’t have anything. If you leave it up to Fox [News], we’d just be viewed as nothing, For this image to get out of well-dressed men coming together, it’s what the country needs at the moment.“

What they wanted to demonstrate specifically to the kids is that the community supports their education, Ward tells Yahoo Parenting. “The idea was really to show the kids that we have their back and celebrate them,” he says of the group, which Ward describes as “a cross-section of all different walks of life” including lawyers, a state legislator, a fire fighter, surgeon, chef, and other professionals. “In this school they may not typically see career professionals on a regular basis. So we wanted them to see people who look like them out there supporting them. Seeing someone in a suit and tie would hopefully encourage them and give them the idea that ‘maybe someday I can do that too.’”

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Photo: Keith Claytor/www.timefrozen.com



The group of strangers who came together want to move forward together as well, in bettering their community. “We had a meeting last night about planning to replicate this in other schools in Hartford,” says Ward, noting that 30 of the participants from the Aug. 25 school greeting attended. “We’re exploring ways to become more involved beyond shaking hands. We talked about real solutions to support and encourage our neighborhood schools. We really just want to get engaged.”

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