James Powell

James was born the first child of his dad's, Monroe D. Powell's, second marriage to Cloteal M. Bynog on January 12, 1966 in Alexandria, Louisiana at Cabrini Memorial Hospital. He grew up in a moderate sized family of three siblings with one older half sister Yolanda, a younger sister Nanette, and a younger brother Gerald. What is more, he had three older half brothers, William, Richard, and Robert from his father's first marriage that had moved to California. His family, although lower middle class, and comprised of a Southern Baptist father, who worked as a window dresser for an upscale clothing store, Weiss & Goldring, and a Roman Catholic mother, who was a Licensed Practical Nurse, was close knit, and nurtured a value for education as a means of climbing the social ladder, and hard work as a necessity for success and survival in an often harsh world.

Growing up of mixed ancestry, a Black Creole with African, French, and Native American roots in the Sonia Quarters, former slave quarters in Alexandria, gave James a first hand impression of the blatant socio economic class stratification that permeated the deep south, and motivated him early in his childhood to actively seek a means of escape: for him, it was the local library.

Often, he found himself spending the entire day in a small local library a few blocks from his home on Mason street engrossed in a book reading about distant lands, famous people, world history, our earth, our solar system, our galaxy, philosophy, the laws governing this universe, and God and man's tenuous relationship with him. It was here, in his small sanctuary away from the dangers of the streets, that his intellectual curiosity was nurtured which resulted in a desire for knowledge that would later shape the course of his life educationally.