Photo via Timefrozen Photography

Work hard, get good grades in school, and you’ll eventually find some semblance of the American dream in life.

It’s what all kids are taught as they matriculate through grade school. It’s why we so often hear the saying that one should “dress for success.”

It’s also why 100 men of color wearing suits greeted elementary school students on their first day of school last week.

An attempt to present a varying image to kids of color of what men of color may actually turn out to be: successful.

Statistics state that black male “students in grade K-12 were nearly 2 1/2 times as likely to be suspended from school in 2000 as white students” and that most of the nearly 2.5 million people in prisons and jails “are people of color…and people with low levels of educational attainment.”

From pictures to videos, so many kids of color see men of color as effigies of what not to become. The criminal on the news is likely a man of color and so is the high school drop-out.

Seeing a roaring crowd of black men cheering on young students from kindergarten to fifth and sixth grades was not only heart warming, it was inspiring.

A suit represents so much more than just a tailored look. It’s success; it’s happiness; it’s an ability to overcome; it’s positive; it’s anti-everything we’ve been feed to believe that’s negative about black men.

For each kid seeing that image, it’s eternal.

I applaud this action and know it will have even more of a long term impact than it did initially.