The Providence Effect

Paul J. Adams III, an African-American man with activist roots in the 1960s civil rights movement, came from a family of teachers. After being black listed himself as a teacher in Alabama because of his civil rights activities, he moved to Chicago, received a master's degree in psychology, and then landed a job as guidance counselor at Providence St. Mel, an all-black parochial school on Chicago's notorious drug-ridden, gang-ruled West Side. "The Providence Effect" is an account of an individual man, the inner city Chicago school he founded, and the student lives that school has changed and saved.