COMPTON — Growing up with nine siblings and both parents in the home, life as a young man may have been relatively easy for Linard Thomas.

But even with that rather extensive support system in place — one unavailable to many inner-city African-American youth — the 19-year-old Cesar Chavez High School student found it difficult to stay on the right path.

“When I was going to middle school, I’m not going to lie … I was a bad student. I used to ditch, I would not go to school, I used to curse out the teachers,” said Thomas. “But my teachers used to tell me ‘Man, you’re not going to ever do anything with that attitude, you’re not going to amount to anything.’”

That attitude, he said, held fast until he entered 10th grade. It was then that a sense of maturity began taking shape, and all of those admonitions by his former teachers began to click. Attempting to regain control of his life and chart a course to success, he began attending school every day, doing his class work and taking home extra credit.

“I knew if I didn’t finish high school I would just be another bum on the street,” he said. “And I didn’t want that to happen. I want to change that. … I want to be something in life.”

It was also around this time that Thomas learned that his girlfriend was carrying a baby. A deeper conversation with his aunt about impending fatherhood, Thomas said, helped solidify the decision to take a different path.

“I told her I’m trying to change and that I don’t want to have this life that I used to have,” he said. “I got tired of ditching school, gang banging and all of that. I was really tired of it. I wanted a better life. Then I was about to have a kid and I didn’t want my kid to come in this world with a daddy that doesn’t go to school and was a dropout.”

Unfortunately, his girlfriend suffered a miscarriage at three months. “That set me back,” he said. “That made me really focus on school because just in case I had a kid. It was like, ‘What am I going to do? I don’t have a job, I’m just going to school. So, next time when I do have a kid, I’m going to have a job, be in school — not acting out anymore, and just being myself.”

These ideas about change, hard work and results led to Thomas’ latest defining moment: Last month, he participated in the City of Compton’s “History Comes Alive in Compton” essay contest, which asked entrants to focus on the role of the civil rights movement in America. His essay, entitled “No More Excuses,” won the grand prize — a $5,000 scholarship.

After reflecting on his own journey and watching so many of his fellow students sleep, talk and text in class — if they bothered to attend school at all — Thomas realized that his original idea, to write a piece on Martin Luther King Jr., would not address a simple issue he believes too few people discuss publicly.

“I chose the topic [of] Brown vs. Board of Education, because I felt like most African-American kids weren’t taking advantage of their free education,” he said. “And with the struggle our ancestors had to go through just to get a free education back in the day, [we] should be happy that [we] are getting a free education because before schools were segregated, Blacks and Whites couldn’t be together — and now that [we] have the opportunity, [we’re] not taking it. So, what was the point in us being integrated? … I figured that I should touch on this subject because nowadays all you see is Blacks and Whites fighting or Blacks and [Latinos] fighting and they aren’t taking advantage of their education.

"You see some Black students in school not paying attention and I wanted to remind them of the struggle [African-Americans] had to go through just to get an education. Before, they would walk miles to get to school; now school is right around the corner and some don’t even come to school. They ditch. What’s the point of signing up for school if you’re not going to go? I feel it’s a personal problem among everybody because it’s not just Blacks — it’s Whites, [Latinos]… What was the point of going through that struggle? I wanted to remind some of the students that life wasn’t always easy for us. Now that we have it, take advantage and use it to the best of your knowledge. Don’t let it go to waste. Don’t let this time pass you by.”

Since sharing the essay with some of his classmates, Thomas has noticed that more of them are paying better attention in class, and others have even begun coming to school more frequently. He acknowledges that some still do not care, “but I am starting to see changes happening, slowly but surely.”

When he completes the last of his credits in January, Thomas plans to attend a junior college before moving on to a four-year university. He is currently looking into Cerritos College, where he wants to take computer engineering and auto-shop courses, while also playing football. Ultimately, he hopes to fulfill a lifelong dream to become an aviation engineer, one that began when his grandmother would buy model train and airplanes for him to take apart and put back together.

“All that matters right now is making my family happy,” he said, “finishing school and going on to college, so I can support them like they did me.”