EVEN WHEN chilling on Sunday morning at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Russell Hicks is the whirlwind of entrepreneurial energy that won him the Knight Foundation's $20,500 Black Male Engagement Award.
He invested it in the young African-Americans whom he guides into owning businesses.
"Untold stories," says Hicks, 36, reflecting on the museum's mural titled "Audacious Freedom: African Americans in Philadelphia 1776-1876" and on people he's mentored - from ex-offender Robert Young, a barber who owns a mobile hair salon, to Temple University freshman Rashawn Williams, who owns Phresh Philadelphia, which organizes block-by-block cleanups.
Even as Hicks plans to revitalize his '95 Nissan Altima on Sunday afternoon with a new distributor cap, he's preparing to bus dozens of high-school seniors, transcripts in hand, on March 8 to Tarboro, N.C., where 50 historically black colleges will recruit them.
