When Auburn University's latest incoming blue-chip linebacker went to take the ACT last Saturday, his mother wasn't worried about the test.

Lakisha Moultry just didn't want her son, Tadarian, being shot and killed on the way to and from the exam. When a young black man from a vulnerable background is so close to making it out of Birmingham these days, a mother's fear can be overwhelming.

The rise of gun violence among young black men and teenagers in Birmingham has put communities, high schools and city officials on edge in recent weeks. Amid the shootings and murders, Lakisha Moultry is raising four sons between the ages of 23 and 11. She says she lives in a constant state of fear.

"It's really hard, and it's really stressful," Lakisha said. "And you wish you could just take them and shrink them and put them in your purse. Because you be so scared. Like, even with the simplest things."

Like taking the ACT on a Saturday morning.

All families of college-bound high schoolers can relate to the stresses and worries related to college entrance exams. In a city so divided socioeconomically, however, being shot while going to take the ACT is something hard to understand for many. But Tadarian Moultry of Jackson-Olin, who is one of Auburn's top recruits, has already been shot once, and so has his older brother. Their uncle was paralyzed in a shooting, and they have many other family connections to gun violence.

Like many students his age at Jackson-Olin and Wenonah high schools, Moultry knew both the alleged shooter and the victim of the homicide near Wenonah on January 31. He played middle school football with the alleged shooter, Monsure Davis, who has been charged with capital murder. Moultry's family was close friends with the victim, Juzahris Webb.

"He was just a cool, goofy dude," Tadarian said of Webb.

Tadarian also knew the second Wenonah student who was shot and killed a week later in downtown Birmingham. That student, Isaiah Johnson, was killed in an apparent robbery attempt during a gun deal on 2nd Avenue South. Johnson was the seventh homicide in a week in Birmingham.

City leaders held a news conference recently to address the rise of gun violence and said the deaths of Wenonah's students, Webb and Johnson, necessitated the need for community conversations about how to fix the growing epidemic. Since then, the shootings have continued unabated. In Fairfield, 18-year-old Eric Dial, Jr. was shot and killed last Wednesday morning. That afternoon, 36-year-old Tavares Smith was gunned down in the north Birmingham neighborhood of Evergreen.

"I don't even want to watch the news because every day it seems like it's another shooting or homicide on such-and-such street in west Birmingham," said Lakisha Moultry, "and it just makes my heart race because I got all boys. And all it is every day is little teenage black males just getting killed every day. It seems like a murder every day."

Smith's death was the 18th homicide of the new year in Birmingham, and 24th county-wide. Birmingham's 19th homicide of the year occurred Monday night in Evergreen. In 2016, Birmingham reached 100 homicides for the second consecutive year. Of the city's 105 homicides last year, 82 deaths resulted from shootings. According to records, 38 of the city's 92 homicides investigated as murder were reported by the west precinct.

Of the planned community meetings to address gun violence, Birmingham Mayor William Bell said "it's about finding out who can reach out and get them to understand we cannot continue down this path of violence and bloodshed." But the systemic problem of gun violence is not so easily correctable, and it isn't even the biggest problem facing young people, according to parents and teachers of current and former students of Jackson-Olin and Wenonah high schools, including prominent athletes.

Gun violence isn't the disease, say those who live in neighborhoods affected by it, but rather just a symptom of a larger problem that begins with poverty and a lack of stability at home. Bedrock life skills like conflict resolution and empathy are learned at an early age. Oftentimes, those personality traits are either underdeveloped in individuals who resort to gun violence to settle disputes, or worse, those life skills are discouraged as weaknesses by peers and role models.

Linebacker Tadarian Moultry of Jackson-Olin is one of Auburn's top recruits. His life and the lives of his family have been shaped by gun violence in Birmingham. Moultry was shot before his sophomore year of high school in a drive-by shooting. Moultry's brother also has been shot. His father and grandfather were drug dealers, according to Michael Grant, Moultry's father.

BREAKING THE CYCLE

There was a time when Lakisha Moultry thought every man in her family was doomed for a life either ruined or sidetracked by the streets.

"Before, it seemed like once a Moultry boy got 17 or 18 he already had been in jail, or probably had a case pending for something," Lakisha said. "He might have gotten himself together when he was 23 or 24, but he wasted so many years of his life."

She lived through it with her brother and cousins, and then again with her oldest son, who was shot while fleeing a home he had attempted to burglarize in 2014. That was an awful summer.

Around the same time, the husband of Lakisha's best friend was shot to death. Tadarian, who is the second of her four boys, was then shot in a drive-by two months later.

Entering his sophomore year of high school at the time and only two weeks away from fall football camp, Tadarian was with friends in a park when a sedan rolled through and a shooter emerged from the sunroof. He fired wildly into a crowd with an AK-47 assault rifle, according to Tadarian.

A bullet went through the football player's leg, and he was taken to the hospital. Lakisha was relayed false information when she received the phone call that her son had been shot.

"They told me he had been shot four times," Lakisha said. "My heart dropped."

It wasn't until she arrived at the hospital that she learned her son had only been shot once.

"It's better to be shot by an AK than a .22," Tadarian said. "A .22 burns and stays in the body."

Despite being shot, Tadarian was extremely lucky. The bullet caused minimal long-term damage. He missed his sophomore season of football, but after surgery and rehab, Tadarian played varsity basketball later that winter.

"People think I'm crazy when I tell them, but the most important thing that happened to me growing up was getting shot because it changed my mindset as a young man," Tadarian said. "I got wiser. And I don't even go out for real because I know I have my family, and just haters on my back. Just everything I have to do, it's way bigger than me right now."

With Tadarian in Ensley's Central Park that day was Monsure Davis, the junior at Jackson-Olin who would later be charged with capital murder in the shooting death of Wenonah student Juzahris Webb.

"I couldn't keep Tadarian away from that park," Lakisha Moultry said. "He had his worst moment, and I guess all teenagers have their worst moment where they kind of rebel against you."

After the drive-by shooting, Tadarian devoted all his energy to the weight room. Meanwhile, his mother banned him from attending teen parties and public parks, and made most social settings off limits. With the help of a transformative football coach and dedicated teachers at Jackson-Olin, Tadarian emerged two years later as one of the top football prospects in the state. He was named a U.S. Army All-American, and now he wants to be the first man in his family to graduate from college.

"My family hasn't done nothing in a while," Tadarian said. "I just know I have to start a trend for my family. It means a lot to me, and I don't usually say this, but I'm proud of it. I want to see my family happy when our name, Moultry, is on the back.

"I just want my family to be proud."

Tadarian's father, Michael Grant, can't talk about the pride he feels for his son without choking up. Grant was kicked out of West End High School when he was 16 years old. Like his father before him, Grant defaulted to a lifestyle of crime and substance abuse at a young age.

"I used to steal cars and started going to jail," Grant said. "I felt l needed to be smarter, so I started selling drugs."

Tadarian Moultry, left, and his father, Michael Grant.

'THE BIG PICTURE'

A car accident in 2008 helped Grant get clean and reunite with his son. He now works at Hyatt Regency Hotel and Southeastern Salvage. Grant says the difference between himself and his son is "vision." Tadarian knew what he wanted to do at a young age, says his father, and he was surrounded by people who helped him achieve a goal.

"It's good when they get that vision at a young age," Grant said. "A lot of black kids don't get that vision or that goal until they're about 30 years old. And, OK, you still can do something, but you waste a lot of time, and they don't see the big picture until they're older."

After sitting out his freshman and sophomore seasons of high school football, Tadarian played strong safety as a junior and then middle linebacker as a senior. He still has a lot to learn about the position, but he's fast and strong and, most importantly, eager to learn.

"He's probably the most explosive, most talented kid I've ever seen at this level, coaching or playing," said Tadarian's high school coach, Tim Vakakes, "but he's also the most humble kid. That's what makes him different."

Tadarian is a direct product of the city's investment into high school athletics over the last 10 years. Allocated $331 million of a county-wide $1.1 billion bond issue, Birmingham City Schools invested $27.8 million into athletics facilities in 2007. Those facilities have helped Vakakes build his program.

Vakakes, who played high school football at Homewood, went from winning just one football game four years ago to finishing 8-3 last season. Jackson-Olin made the playoffs for the first time since 1999 before losing in the first round. According to school records, Moultry is the first football player in Jackson-Olin's 65-year history to sign with Auburn, and the first to sign with any SEC team since David Palmer signed with Alabama in 1990. Before Moultry, Auburn went five years without signing a player out of Birmingham City Schools (Cassanova McKinzy, 2012, Woodlawn).

Next year, Vakakes plans to have around 100 players on his football team, including blue-chip recruit Coynis Miller, a defensive tackle who already has scholarship offers from Michigan, Auburn, Alabama, other SEC schools and UAB. Over at Wenonah, coach Ronald Cheatham and his Dragons advanced all the way to the Class 5A state championship last season. Ramsay, the city's magnet school, won the Class 6A state championship.

The renaissance of high school football for Birmingham City Schools is a sign of positive change, but it's not a solution for the large majority of young, vulnerable black men in the city. Cheatham at Wenonah says more vocational programs for students and an emphasis on mental health are two important areas that need addressing.

"Everyone is not going to be an academic and everyone is not going to be an athlete," Cheatham said, "but if he sees he can make a living through job training -- we've got to show kids another way because all they see everyday is pull the trigger, and that's going to make me look gangster."

COMPANY YOU KEEP

Some of the social-media photographs left behind by Isaiah Johnson, the 17-year-old Wenonah student killed in the gun deal on 2nd Avenue South, suggest a young man who wanted to project that image. In one picture, Johnson is proudly displaying a small amount of cash and a pistol. Friends with the first student from Wenonah who was killed on Jan.31, Johnson died, according to police, trying to rob a gun dealer in an alley. The homicide has been ruled justifiable and the shooter will not be charged.

Johnson's associate who accompanied him to the gun deal, 17-year-old Tavares Floyd, has been charged with murder despite not shooting or killing anyone. That charge is based on a state law that allows for prosecution of an individual involved in a felony that causes loss of life.

That Alabama law sounds a lot like a derivative of something Lakisha Moultry constantly preaches to her sons during their volatile years: You are the company you keep.

Tadarian, who hopes to be Auburn University's next great linebacker, heard that axiom hundreds of times during his rebellious teenage years before he was shot. He now hammers that message into his younger brothers.

"You never know what your friend is doing," Lakisha said. "In your presence, he may be OK and seem laid back and not get into too much. But on the other end, he has another friend who he stays with, and he's going to do what he's going to do.

"And I tell him constantly, you are the company you keep. And you're not going to hang with people who sell drugs and say, I'm just with them every now and then. You sell them, too, if you're hanging out with them sometimes. And I hate to be that blunt, but you are the company you keep, and I instilled that.

"If you're with somebody who is doing that, or getting into trouble, you're a troublemaker also. And from now on you're going to be viewed the same as that person."

Except if you're trading guns with minors, apparently. The gun dealer who shot Johnson was not charged. Unnamed by police, the shooter was attempting to trade a rifle for a pistol. The deal was brokered on Facebook, according to police, highlighting the ease for a minor to buy a gun.

"It's not hard for them to get [guns] because half of the time they will buy them from adults," Lakisha Moultry said. "It is really easy for them to get them. It's just really easy on our side of town to get a gun. It's almost like going into a convenience store."

Tadarian Moultry and his mother, Lakisha Moultry, at Jackson-Olin's senior night.

LEAVING THE STATE

The easy access to guns in Birmingham and the increase in gun violence reminds many parents in west Birmingham of the gangland mentality of the 1990s. The city's record high for homicides was 141 in 1992. Fearful of wanton violence, some parents, including Lakisha Moultry's best friend, Laquita Nelson, are encouraging their children to leave the city.

"They kill each other right now for no reason at all," Nelson said. "They don't even have to know you. They shoot each other over something they might have seen or heard on Facebook. It's just senseless killings now."

Lakisha and Laquita became friends through the men in their lives. Lakisha's brother was friends with Laquita's boyfriend. Lakisha's brother, David Moultry, is now paralyzed from a gunshot wound, and Laquita's husband, Jake Nelson Jr., was shot to death in 2014.

The Nelsons' entire lives have been shaped by gun violence. In 1995, they were victims of a drive-by shooting that left Laquita with limited use of her right arm. Her son, who was five-months-old at the time, was shot in the head. Miraculously, he made a full recovery.

Now 21 years old, Jake Nelson III and his younger brother, Juquan, are moving to Florida in June to attend welding school.

"I'm looking forward to them going," Laquita said. "I said, get away from here. It don't matter. Even though it's going to break my heart because I won't have nobody here with me, I want y'all to get away from Birmingham, Alabama, and what's going on."

Juquan Nelson was a member of Wenonah's basketball teams that won three consecutive state championships from 2011 to 2013. When his father was killed in 2014, he lost his passion for the game, says his mother. Now Laquita is worried her youngest son could fall into the same cycle of gun violence that left her husband dead.

After an investigation and conflicting eyewitness accounts, police ruled Jake Nelson Jr.'s death a justifiable homicide.

"Everybody wants a gun now because they figure everyone else has a gun," Laquita said. "So, they feel like they have to have one for protection. At the time, my husband didn't have a gun or own a gun. But when he got killed, it was a part of me that felt if only he would have had some protection on him. If only he would have had a gun he would have been able to defend and protect himself."

Cheatham, who has coached football at Wenonah since 1989, understands the community he serves better than most. Sometimes, he says, it's just best to leave.

"A parent knows their child," Cheatham said. "If a parent thinks it's best to remove a child from an environment, then they're probably correct."

Black citizens of the city have fled Birmingham for generations. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, people of color migrated north for factory jobs and a better life without Jim Crow laws and racial oppression. Beginning in the 1980s, when gangs became prevalent in urban neighborhoods across the country, Birmingham City Schools lost thousands of students each year to the suburbs.

Birmingham City Schools enrolled around 75,000 students in the 1980s. In 2014, that number had dwindled to less than 24,000. The declining numbers have since stabilized, but long-term solutions to problems facing vulnerable children in the city will take more than conventional education and better facilities, say experts.

"The mental health of children, I don't think we do enough of that," said Cheatham, the longtime football coach at Wenonah, "because a lot of kids have issues and those issues have been simmering for a long time, and now all of sudden we have guns and we have gun violence and got craziness going on because the streets say I need to shoot you.

"We have to grow kids differently, and assist the ones who have issues. We have to start them young, and then track them because it is not an overnight fix. You start early, and that's not to say our older generation needs to be tossed away, but you got to get something in place for those guys. Address these issues and attack these mental health issues, and maybe we can start changing lives by changing attitudes."

In Woodlawn, there is a new family center scheduled to open in March aimed at doing just that.

PLAN FOR CHANGE

Painted chartreuse green and anchoring a building with big plans, the enormous and steel 'W' framing the entrance of the new James Rushton Early Learning and Family Success Center projects a welcoming image.

Nearing completion, the center is located at 5512 1st Avenue South in a district of Woodlawn that has benefited recently from an urban renewal project. Transformed by the philanthropic organization Woodlawn Foundation, the district features new homes, new sidewalks, new businesses and a vision based on the hugely successful revitalization of the East Lake community in Atlanta.

The James Rushton Early Learning and Family Success Center is part of a "cradle to college" approach to community revitalization. The Woodlawn Foundation calls the new family center "one of the most important and transformational projects that Birmingham has seen in years." The center will begin educating infants at six weeks old, according to its executive director, and parents are required to participate in daily learning activities.

"We know that the children's brains are most malleable when they're young, and that's when their brains are forming," said Delyne Hicks, the center's executive director. "Your personality is almost completely formed by the time it is five. And so we've got to get them young."

In Atlanta's East Lake community, the Purpose Built Communities model transformed a high-crime area into one featuring a top-rated school. As an effect, East Lake experienced a 95 percent reduction in crime statistics. Social skills, including empathy, will be developed early at Woodlawn's new family center. It's a positive start to correcting the problems related to poverty in urban communities, including gun violence.

"It breaks my heart every time I see a young person who has been a victim of [gun violence]," Hicks said. "And there really is more than one victim. Both of them have been victims because they don't know how to manage, they don't know how to self regulate and they don't know how to work out interpersonal relationships.

"They've never been taught how to do that, and they've never had the support of adults, and what that looks like."

For Lakisha Moultry, whose son is going to Auburn this summer to play football, these last few months of gun violence before graduation have left her exhausted with frayed nerves. Tadarian is so close to breaking out of the cycle that his mother rarely lets him leave the house except for school, workouts and last Saturday's ACT test. Tadarian's father sold drugs and his grandfather sold drugs. When Tadarian was shot, he says his life changed for the better. Surrounded by violence his entire life, he craves the new environment awaiting him at Auburn.

"To experience it, and know firsthand about violence, that makes you want to change," Lakisha said. "We have been through so much just having your life one day on Monday and then it completely changes on Tuesday. Because those are the moments we done had over the years. And I'm asking why?"

Joseph Goodman is a senior reporter and columnist for Alabama Media Group. He's on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.