KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Charles King remembers in his third year teaching a parent called him aside and told him to be more authentic, to let some of his roots show because the black students in that urban Houston school needed to know he was one of them.

The encounter changed the way that King, now 39 and the head of a Kansas City teacher training program, would deal with students the rest of his teaching career. For the first time he realized the importance "and the power" of being a black man in a classroom.

Last month, the Urban League of Greater Kansas City's report on "The State of Black...