The Tribune

By KEILE CAMPBELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kcampbell@tribunemedia.net

TALK show host and community advocate Charles Carlos Mackey has received the Outstanding Servant Leadership Award from White House Prayer for Our Nations, a private organisation, after decades of work in Bahamian sports, culture and youth development.

Mr Mackey received the award earlier this month in Arlington, Virginia, during the organisation’s 28th anniversary ceremony.

The longtime host of The Best of Sports World on ZNS told The Tribune that faith has guided his life, from his childhood in segregated Daytona Beach, Florida, to his decision to move to The Bahamas in 1984.

"I said to myself 'GOD, this is a grand slam. All the things I've done, I know that this one is the one you chose to do. It’s this one I'm going out with you in first class," Mr Mackey said. "I'm just following your footsteps, because you will always be there for me."

Mr Mackey, whose father was Bahamian and mother was from Georgia, said racism in the American South shaped him early. He recalled white men surrounding members of his church, shouting racial slurs and blocking them from leaving before a police lieutenant who knew his father escorted the group away.

"Big dogs that you see on TV with Dr King? I've been through that at six years old," Mr Mackey said.

Mr Mackey later attended Florida A&M University, where he played baseball and earned a bachelor’s degree in Physical Education and Health. He also played baseball in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Caracas and Venezuela before earning a master’s degree in guidance counselling and education from Bowie State College.

After working in rehabilitation and counselling in the United States, Mr Mackey moved to New Providence in 1984, saying he felt called to serve young Bahamians.

Soon after arriving, he helped establish the Dean Granger Centre as a halfway house for men during the country’s drug crisis, drawing on his rehabilitation experience in the United States.

He later helped bring the FAMU Marching 100 to New Providence in 1990, an initiative he said led to three Bahamian students receiving full scholarships to the university. He also supported football clinics with historically black colleges and universities, track and field initiatives and cultural exchange programmes.

In 2010, he led a group that approached then Youth, Sports and Culture Minister Charles Maynard with the idea for a united band, an effort that led to the Bahamas All Star Band and helped Bahamian students secure music scholarships in the United States.

Mr Mackey said his work has never centred on recognition.

"If I cannot take The Bahamas to the world," he said. "I'm gonna bring the world to The Bahamas."