In The News: Silencing Hawthorne High’s Music Man

For most of this decade, the Hawthorne High School drum line has arrived at competitions dressed in black, tuxedo-cut uniforms with the boys smartly extending their arms to escort the girls from the bus, where they leave behind their baggy jeans, sneakers, short skirts — and lives often filled with poverty, violence and failure.

Hundreds of mostly poor, minority kids from Hawthorne and Lennox have found this unlikely road to success despite living in some of the South Bay’s harshest neighborhoods. Many have risen at Hawthorne High, a tough and academically struggling campus racked by repeated student riots and poor test scores, to become world-class percussionists and brass players.

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