His dreams were changed by a nightmare.

When Rodney W. Hawkins II was 15, his uncle was killed in an encounter with police. He says the officers handcuffed his uncle and shot him twice in the back.

Surely, he thought, the world would be as outraged as he was. But the world never learned of the killing, he said, because it never made the papers or the television news. And that’s when Hawkins decided he wanted to be a journalist.

Hawkins said of his uncle’s death, “I just knew that I never wanted somebody’s family to feel like our family felt in terms of his story never being told.”

Before the shooting, Hawkins intended to pursue a career in politics. But at 21, he has harnessed that negativity to propel himself along a different path.

The senior at Howard University is majoring in broadcast journalism, with a minor in political science. For four years straight, Hawkins has been able to intern at the Fox affiliate in Austin, Texas.

His goal, he said, is to become a foreign correspondent or a political reporter for one of the four major television networks.

He attributes his dedication and diligence to his mother, a manager at the Department of Health in Plano, Texas. She was a single parent for much of his childhood.

Hawkins said his mother taught him the meaning of hard work, demanding A’s whenever he brought home B’s on his report card.

Hawkins said his mother had once doted the same way over her younger brother, until he was shot by police. The shooting, Hawkins recalled, took a devastating toll on the woman who had been a rock in the family.

“We were so used to things going right,” he said. “And this changed our perspective.”

– Lelan LeDoux

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