8 Ransom Everglades LOG FALL 2026 At the same time, Beatty’s parents were also fierce champions of education. Robert was the first in his family to attend college, and he was insistent that Matthew and his older sister Victoria Beatty ’00 – now a law professor and a consultant for Ransom Everglades – see education as a source of both social mobility and selfpreservation for Black people growing up in America. “My dad always said, someone may not like you, or they may say you’re not qualified because of the color of your skin, but they can never say that you lack the education,” Beatty recalled. Thus, the place for him and his sister was Ransom Everglades. But Beatty’s experience at RE wasn’t always easy. He recalled spending much of the earlier years orbiting Victoria’s friend group of slightly older Black girls as a collective “little brother” figure. “I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that I was Black, and there wasn’t a ton of Black students there, or if it was the fact that I wasn’t a real athletic kid or wasn’t considered one of the ‘cool’ kids, but I spent those first couple of years trying to find my footing,” he said. RE’s academic rigor also posed a formidable challenge. But Beatty feels grateful for teachers who “didn’t let me slip through the cracks” as well as those who “pressed and pushed me even though I complained, because they knew I had more in me.” And he found a space of particular solace in the Black Students Association, led at the time by then-Dean of Students (and current RE Chief Operating Officer) David Clark ’86. “His guidance and support always validated what we were feeling as Black kids in the school, which was that, yes, we’re different, and that is okay, and we should still, in our differences, celebrate who we are, be comfortable with who we are, and show up as our full selves,” Beatty said. “Matthew really felt like it was his safe haven,” Clark recalled. “It made a difference in his life. He was probably one of those kids where it took him a while to figure out who he was. And then when he figured it out, he was good.” Beatty also found inspiration in his humanities classes – including an AP U.S. Government class that ventured far beyond the test to tackle questions of morality and civic responsibility. “There were a lot of discussions around not just learning our country’s system and how it’s set up, but how should people be governed?” he recalled. “We had much broader conversations about caring for communities, caring for people and what the best systems are to do that.” “I wanted it to be the central thing that I worked on every single day when I got up: to ensure that Black people were getting the equitable share of resources that they deserved in this country.” – Matthew Beatty ’01 Matthew Beatty ’01 interacts with children at the Belafonte TACOLCY Center
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