Robert Henderson knows the value of education more than most.
Growing up on Chicago’s south side, Henderson was raised by his grandmother in a home that included his six siblings and four uncles. The low-income, high-crime neighborhood of Englewood in Chicago made it difficult for youth to graduate high school, let alone dream of college. Henderson watched as many of the people he grew up around turned to life on the streets, selling drugs on street corners or committing robberies.
But dedication, a will to succeed and inspiration from his grandmother helped Henderson — who moved to the Denver metro area last year — get through college and start a life in education with a desire to give back and educate those with similar backgrounds to himself. He was also the first in his family to graduate college.
Henderson is one of two subjects of a documentary airing on PBS’s POV program Sept. 12. The film follows two young men from tough upbringings in Englewood from their last year of high school through college graduation and beyond.
“All the Difference” was filmed over the course of five-and-a-half years by filmmaker Tod Lending and is part of an education spotlight that runs through the week of Sept. 12.
Shortly after filming ended, Henderson, 25, moved to Denver to work with and worked with students at an elementary school for the 2015-16 school year. After the year ended, Henderson left the program and moved to Louisville, near Boulder, where he began tutoring privately.
He’s mostly put work on hold while he travels around to different screenings of the documentary. So far he’s been to Los Angeles, Baltimore, Florida and back to Chicago, quite a trek for someone who never thought he’d ever have the opportunity to set foot on a plane when he was growing up in one of the most violent neighborhoods in the country. Last week he was in Chicago where he got to see the documentary with his grandmother.
“My grandmother really took care of me and made me who am I today. She taught me right from wrong,” Henderson said. “She’s my hero, my inspiration, my everything. The lady of my life.”
Henderson was one of more than 40 people interviewed for the documentary while a senior at Urban Prep Academy’s Englewood campus in Chicago.
“He was a young man who had a compelling back story, but he was also incredibly driven and knew the importance of higher education,” said Wes Moore, an executive producer for the film.
Moore has a unique perspective of the role education plays in life — he credits mentors for his own journey from an imperiled childhood to become a Rhodes scholar, and Army combat veteran and a White House Fellow. He wrote the New York Times best-seller “The Other Wes Moore” about the divergent lives of two young men from Baltimore who share the same name.
Filmmaker Lending would travel between his home in Chicago and Lake Forest College where Henderson was attending school in an upscale suburb of Chicago. The film’s other subject, Krishaun Branch, attended Fisk University in Nashville.
Lending became a father figure, mentor and a friend to Henderson, who grew up without both parents after his father killed his mother when he was 2 years old.
Lending expected to Henderson to make it through college, despite his background and was able to witness him grow up in a tough environment as one of only a few black students in his college classes.
“I saw Robert mature as a young man in terms his awareness of himself and his awareness of others,” Lending said. “I think he was challenged in ways he had never been challenged before academically and socially.”
Henderson graduated with a double major in history and American studies and a minor in Asian studies. After college, he worked for a year in South Carolina with City Year — an organization that partners with public schools in high poverty and urban environments — before moving to Denver. He’s tutored students in math, a subject he struggled with in school, but also tries to help those coming up in similar situations understand what it will take for them to go to college and show them that it can be done.
Henderson hopes to get a master’s degree and doctorate, and plans to stay involved with education.
“I just hope whatever I do, I continue advocate for education, social justice and the kids,” he said.
The film’s title, “All the Difference,” is taken from the closing line of the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken.” As fellow executive producer Joy Thomas Moore said, both Henderson and Branch took the road less traveled by others in their neighborhood. Now the hope is the film will spark more conversation about education and ways to help people like Henderson and Branch.
“How do we as a society help them on this road less traveled? How do we make it the norm as opposed to the exception?” she said.