Chicago’s escalating urban violence, including last week’s videotaped beating death of an honors student by four teenagers, has kept the city’s name in unflattering national headlines all year.

But ever since 1971, at least one man has had the recipe for many of Chicago’s inner-city youths’ success: education.

An inspiring and often tear-jerking documentary, “The Providence Effect,” chronicles how Paul J. Adams III lost his job as a teacher in southern Alabama after being blacklisted in the 1960s for participating in the civil rights movement and moved to Chicago where he has since taught generations of scholars at Providence St. Mel, an all-Black parochial school that offers a quality education to students from poverty-stricken, drug-infested neighborhoods and gives them a new lease on life.

“The recipe is having very smart people working on the same objective as the classroom and with an objective that we are here to send them to college,” said Adams, who added that teachers rely on data and adjust their curriculum to meet their students needs. “We are very passionate about it. We have great leadership, teachers and we have parents that support us.”

Beginning as a guidance counselor around 1971, Adams began to shape the lives of the students, offering support and leadership. His impact was so profound that he was promoted to principal and in one year changed the entire dynamics of the school. They began offering enriched college preparatory classes, raised the benchmarks for academic excellence, made verbal agreements with students as to what their conduct should be and how their grades should match, introduced uniforms and uniformity, rid gangs from the school, demanded parent involvement and enforced a zero tolerance policy on drugs and gangs.

The school’s success became a model by which other schools in the state of Illinois were compared as did it become a model of fear for those who were ostensibly racist. The archdiocese which once owned the school threatened it with closure on several occasions. But Adams put his civil rights background to use, drawing protests, fundraisers and media coverage. As a result, he was able to land a number of donations to buy the school outright and convert it into a non-profit independent site.

For the last 30 years, Providence St. Mel’s has had a 100 percent college placement record and for the past seven years over half have been accepted to first tier and Ivy League colleges and universities. Alumni featured in the documentary — directed and produced by Rollin Binzer and Tom Hurvis — have gone off to become White House aides, journalists, authors, bankers, chief residents of ER’s, assistant attorney general, deans of top tier schools, technicians, and lawyers — just to name a few.

“They have [intelligence], because we expect them to have it,” said Adams. “It doesn’t cost anything to have high expectations. We do everything in our power to keep that excitement there,” including giving stock, cash prizes, awards and travel trips to the top students.

What inspired Adams to be great was obligation. “I think what defined my life was the [civil rights] movement itself, the people who made the sacrifices … my parents [who] sacrificed for me and all the young people who died in the civil rights movement. I have an obligation to them to do the very best. … I owe them because of their sacrifices,” he said. “I think it’s past critical. I think it’s a disaster what has happened to our children in our inner cities. If we don’t get education under control in this country, what happens on these streets is going to make the civil rights movement look like a tea party. … That’s exactly what’s happening and it doesn’t seem to bother people.”

And while the civil rights movement may have been his inspiration to lead, it has been the school’s mission statement that alumni’s said has been theirs.

“We believe in the creation of inspired lives produced by the miracle of hard work. We are not frightened by the challenges of reality but believe that we can change the perception of this world and our place within it. So, we work, plan, build and dream in that order. We believe that one must earn the right to dream. Our talent, discipline, and integrity will be our contribution to a new world because we believe that we can take this place, this time and this people and make a better place, a better time and a better people. And with God’s help we either find a way or make one.”