Urbandictionary.com defines the term “solutionary” this way:

Someone who finds revolutionary answers to life problems. A problem solver, an inventive activist. A type of revolutionary who makes change by providing a better way to do things. 

In this second portion of my changemaker conversation with Penny Franklin, she shares how she started to push for new solutions to old problems when her children started facing the same kinds of barriers to school success that faced her in her youth.  Please read, watch, listen and share.  And stay tuned. Part III of this conversation will air early next week. 



































Penny begins her reflection in Part II by recalling the parable of babies floating down a stream while people madly jump in to try and save them.  This goes on for quite some time before someone finally decides they’d better go upstream to see who is throwing babies in the water in the first place. When Penny first heard that story, she recalls being quick to ask “Why?  Why are there babies in the water?  How did they get there?” 
“Even before I heard the end of that, the first time…Someone was saying, ‘And then another body and then another’… I remember going, ‘Wait a minute. We’ve got to find out why…You don’t sit and wait for stuff like this and let it continue to happen. Fix it!”
Her nature and experience lead Penny to ask questions and move forward to investigate the source of a problem before jumping in with quick fixes. While she balks at the word “leader” because she sees herself working alongside others and prodding from the rear, her actions are the very definition of the word.
“When my children, I felt, were being discriminated against in the school system, particularly around discipline,  I said, ‘Enough!’ … Larry Carter was the chairperson of the Education Committee with the NAACP. I have to give him the credit for getting with parents and saying, ‘… I need you to document for me things that have happened with your children in the school system so that we can present it to the school board to say there’s a problem’. Because what was happening was the system was trying to isolate these individual incidents … and not (understanding that) collectively, something’s not right…There’s a deeper level of what’s going on.”
After many years of working second shift at her job at Hubbell Lighting, a day shift job opened up when her children were in middle and high school.  This allowed her to be more engaged in the community.
“But, by that time there had been a lot of damage done already, especially with my son.”
Issues of racial bias were apparent in her work environment as well.  The few African American employees were being called to task for things like “not smiling enough”. 
“It was a kind of a hostile environment with some folks. With other folks, it wasn’t an issue. But there were a handful of people who did everything they could to try to get me upset or make me quit or get me fired.”
Penny recognized the importance of learning to speak up against discriminatory behavior in both her  work and community environments. 
“If I’m doing my job, what difference does it make if I smile or not?… I had had enough of … being mistreated that I said ‘No more. This is going to stop.’ And it saved my job.”
She learned to speak up about issues in the schools as well.