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High-Flying Careers

Jamail Larkins with his acrobatic plane, which he purchased when he was 18.
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Jamail Larkins with his acrobatic plane, which he purchased when he was 18.

It was playwright Lorraine Hansberry who coined the phrase "young, gifted and black." Speaking to a group of young writers in 1964, Hansberry said, "Though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted, in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic, to be young gifted and black."

The phrase reverberated out of the civil rights movement. In honor of students nationwide during these weeks of graduation ceremonies, News & Notes is using the theme to spotlight a few people to watch.

In the last of a three-part series of profiles, we spotlight three more young people poised to have promising futures: Jamail Larkins, one of the youngest pilots ever to fly solo in the United States who now performs in air shows across the nation; independent filmmaker Alrick Brown; and 14-year-old modeling prodigy Gerren Taylor.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Roy Hurst
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