Birmingham Ex-Offender Works to Redeem Himself and Others

By Marie Sutton | City of Birmingham Living on welfare and with little else, 11-year-old Ronald  McKeithen only really wanted one thing: for his mother to stay home. A single parent raising four kids in Birmingham’s Titusville community, the woman had long since stopped cooking warm meals. She ceased the thumb wrestling contests and her eyes no longer lit up at the sight of her babies. Instead, she remained in a drunken stupor with eyes turned toward bottles and beer. Ronald had to quickly learn the domestic art of washing clothing in the bathtub and braiding his baby sister’s hair. Because of home duties he missed a lot of school though he loved being in the classroom. Not even his begging could move his mother, who would rather be in the neighborhood shot houses drinking her fill. When Ronald tried to physically block her from leaving out of the door, the woman would do anything to get past him, even whip out a knife. “She stabbed me twice,” he remembered. A young Ronald couldn’t control anything in his life, it seemed. Not his mother. Not the school being unwilling to give him grace for missed days. Not his circumstances. He...