Best & Brightest: Told He Lacked the “Intellectual Capacity” To Learn, Ph.D Candidate Proves Otherwise

Markell Harrison-Jackson grew up with a self-destructive combination of uncontrollable anger and learning inability.

His father murdered his mother when he was two years old. He then spent the rest of his childhood in more than 40 foster care homes in New York where he was told he had a learning disability, that he did not have the intellectual capacity to obtain a college degree and that he was seriously emotionally disturbed.

“I was walking around as a youngster angry at the world,” says Jackson, adding that his father was the source of his rage.

At the age of 18, when he had to leave the foster care system, he had a decision to make: either he’d prove folks right, or wrong. He decided on the latter; forgave his father, enrolled in community college and poured those raging waters of anger into a well of motivation.

“I have been hungry to obtain knowledge,” he says. “I have worked all my life to prove folks wrong.”

And, he has.