The move wasn't easy on anyone. Jordan, who'd fit in seamlessly at posh Marietta High, found himself suddenly in the peeling hallways of Samuel W. Wolfson High in southside Jacksonville. The hard boys stepped to him in the yard; he was mugged for his phone after school. He sulked through most of a year, flunked a statewide test and was dumped in remedial reading, of all places. His father didn't put up with it for a minute. "He'd be up late talking to girls, so I took away his cellphone, then his TV and Xbox, too. Then I took the door off his room. He'd say, 'But those are my things,' and I'd say, 'No, they're mine; the power they use, that's mine, too.'" Ron enrolled him in virtual after-school, making him work with an online tutor and standing over his shoulder till he'd finished.
By the start of his junior year, the message kicked in; Jordan's mood and grades picked up sharply. He made a pack of friends, aced the statewide tests and became the de facto mayor of the school. "Anything he wore, people would copy; he put a part in his hair, they copied that, too," says Aliyah Harris, his ex-girlfriend, 18, who's been accepted to Clark Atlanta and Florida Atlantic universities. She had as much to do with raising his game as any of the adults in his life. "I told him to get a job – I've got three of 'em myself – and start getting your head right for college. Second, pull your pants up; you're no type of gangsta, even if you listen to Rick Ross." They were Wolfson's power couple, though chaste in the way that church kids are, never finding alone time for sex. "Whether it was me or my wife, someone was always here when Aliyah drove him home from school," says Ron. "We love that girl, but we weren't having surprises. Her father felt the same way."
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Stand Your Ground's Latest Victim: Jordan Davis | Culture News | Rolling Stone
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