Billboard urges young men to pull up their pants and focus on education

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Memphis, Tennessee – An African-American businessman has spent thousands of dollars of his hard-earned cash to urge young men to pull up their pants.

Fred Davis, 79, a decades-long owner of an insurance company, has invested $6,000 to sponsor a billboard that reads “Show your mind. Not your behind.”

The eye-catching ad displays two images on each side of the words. On the left side is a picture of a graduate in a cap and gown and on the opposite side is an image of a young man wearing sagging pants.

“It’s a look that’s degrading,” says Davis in an interview with theGrio. “I know some people say it’s a style but it’s a style that shouldn’t be imitated by younger people looking for role models.”

“The contrast is someone showing he’s accomplished something using his mind, ready to move onto the next level.”

Davis believes the “thuggish” dress code portrays a poor image and perpetuates stereotypes that tarnish all black people.

“It creates a negative image not only for them but all African-Americans, especially people who are looking to degrade black folks,” says Davis, a former Memphis city councilman and civil rights activist who marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We need to show images of intelligence, progress and forward momentum. Rather than harking back to a prison kind of dress code when men in prison showed they were available by dropping their pants.”

He says he went along with the concept because, though he’s had heard many, including pastors from the pulpit, lamenting about sagging pants, no one was speaking directly to the “perpetrators.”

He hopes the ad, which has been rented for 3 months on Airways Boulevard (one of the busiest streets in Memphis on route to the international airport), will open up a conversation and give others a license to speak out.

“Silence is tacit approval,” he says.

He adds that he deliberately placed the giant billboard adjacent to his office “so if anyone had a problem with it they wouldn’t have to look far to find out who put it there.”

Davis was recently chosen as the only African-American in the 100 most influential insurance executives in the country.

Follow Kunbi Tinuoye on Twitter at @Kunbiti