Climbing the ranks; first African-American woman named head of ACCT. (Around the Nation).

OAKLAND Calif. -- It was 1994, and Kaiser Permanente was negotiating to build a new hospital on the Laney College football field in Oakland.

Brenda Knight had nothing to do with Laney College or Kaiser Permanente, the large California HMO. But as an official with the Babe Ruth Baseball League, she had everything to do with athletics.

"Raising African Americans in the inner city, you have to do enough with them or you could lose them to the streets," Knight said.

As Brenda Knight turns 50 this month, to say she's made a difference would understate her journey from being a baseball mom to climbing the ranks of higher education.

Knight has recently celebrated several milestones: receiving her bachelor's degree and being sworn in as chair of the Association of Community College Trustees, a national organization representing more than 1,200 colleges, 6,500 trustees and 11 million students. Her swift ascent has prompted many in Oakland to tout her as a formidable candidate for public office.

But for now, Knight said, it's the students who occupy her thoughts.

"I want to be able to influence young minds to pursue higher learning," she said before a recent board meeting.

As the first African-American woman to head the 26-member ACCT board, Knight will be in a position both to upgrade the services the organization provides to trustees and to strengthen group's message about the critical role played by community colleges in expanding opportunity.

Her own story is one of the best examples of that role.

Knight started at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif., after high school, but returned home after a few semesters to become a wife and mother.

In the early 1980s, with three young sons, Knight became the first woman to coach a team in Oakland's Babe Ruth league, an amateur baseball and softball program.

She had watched her brothers play as a child, and what she didn't know, she quickly learned from books and videos--well enough to become coach of the year and ultimately president in the late 1980s.

But in 1994, the Kaiser proposal propelled Knight in a different direction. Determined to save the Laney field, she decided to run for the community college board in East Oakland, a diverse district with a high concentration of black and Latino voters.

Her grass-roots campaign wasn't deemed a serious threat, and her opponent, a Chinese American man who was board president, underestimated her chances.

One of her mentors was Bill Patterson, former manager of recreation services for Oakland and a local NAACP official.

"Brenda was one of the brightest of all of the people I met," he said.

She defeated her opponent 2-1, joining the Peralta Community College Board just in time to cast the deciding "no" vote against the Kaiser deal.

In June, the Peralta board of trustees unanimously approved a resolution opposing Ward Connerly's Racial Privacy Initiative, which would bar state government, including public schools, from collecting racial information.

Peralta is a diverse district comprising Laney and three other colleges--Vista Community College, Merritt College and College of Alameda--and about 25,000 full- and part-time students.

"Community colleges are about accessibility, affordability, accountability and flexibility. We are about moving forward, not backward, in civil rights protection," Knight said.

She said that job has already been made more difficult because of Proposition 209.

"It hurts us tremendously. It makes us have to get more creative," she said. "What community colleges are able to do is assist the minorities, the African Americans, the Latinos, by preparing them through the community college doors first and get them better prepared to go to the UC system."

Knight went about becoming a trustee with the same rigor she applied to coaching baseball. In addition to reading, that meant attending orientations and seminars sponsored by the California Community College Trustees, the statewide branch of ACCT.

She stood out early on, said David Viar, CEO of CCCT.

"I was immediately impressed with the questions she asked, with her vivacious, outgoing manner, and her interest in being a better trustee."

If there's one area in which Knight needed no training, it was public speaking and her forthright speaking style helped fuel her success.

In her professional work as a Medicare specialist, she was so entertaining that her seminars were jam-packed, and she eventually set up her own consulting firm doing similar work.

At a recent Laney College graduation, Knight amused the crowd with this line: "Whether you graduate cum laude, magna cum laude, or thank-the-Lordy, today is your day."

It was one such speaking engagement--at her alma mater, Castlemont High School in Oakland--that convinced Knight to complete her college degree.

She was exhorting students to continue their education, when one student asked, "What do you have?" The question, Knight recalls, "pierced me to the core. I wanted to not just talk the talk but to walk the walk."

Using her remaining credits from Humboldt, Knight began enrolling in classes at all four of the Peralta colleges, completing her associate's degree two years ago.

By that point, she was already involved with ACCT and had been appointed treasurer. "I did not want to receive the gavel of a national organization before I had my degree. It really became important that I was degreed down, especially because of my African American and minority younger sisters. The message I wanted them to see was that education was important to me."

On the Peralta board, where Knight is president for the second time, her leadership style also wins people over.

"There are times when we have 3-4 votes," said Vice President Darryl Moore. "But they are rare. Brenda works for consensus."

Her selection to the executive committee, setting her on track to become chair, was a landmark for African Americans in higher education, according to Lenore Croudy, chairperson of the Mott Community College Board of Trustees and a former ACCT member.

"It was very emotional for me," said Croudy, who had sought the position a few years earlier. "We have a policy statement on equity, diversity, multicultural education and all that. She can set an example for others that indeed this can be a reality."