Against All Odds: Allen Brooks Fulfills His Promise and Inspires a Generation

Allen Brooks, 60, grad­u­at­ed col­lege in Decem­ber 2024, ful­fill­ing a promise he made to his late mom Sarah Pearl Brooks to fin­ish his stud­ies. Brooks’ daugh­ter Brion­na Wash­ing­ton shared an emo­tion­al Tik­Tok video cap­tur­ing the spe­cial moment Brooks walked across the stage to col­lect his long-await­ed degree.

The video clip quick­ly went viral with over 50 mil­lion views and tens of thou­sands of Tik­Tok users shar­ing their con­grat­u­la­tions, some say­ing how inspired they were by Brooks’ achieve­ment.

“This is exact­ly what I need­ed to see today I need­ed some inspi­ra­tion to fin­ish what I start­ed because it’s easy to feel dis­cour­aged when you feel like you’re behind,” wrote one com­menter.

Brooks first enrolled at Alaba­ma A&M in 1982 on a par­tial band schol­ar­ship, but he nev­er com­plet­ed his stud­ies and left in 1986.
“I was only com­mit­ted to the band and I allowed myself to to make bad grades here and bad grades there,” Brooks recalled. “But then after awhile, I got to a point to where I had to leave school. Things came up and then I had to get a real job to sup­port myself.”

Over the years, Brooks went on with his life and start­ed a fam­i­ly of his own, but his moth­er would always encour­age him to con­sid­er fin­ish­ing school.

“Years lat­er, my mom, she always would say to me, ‘I wish you would go back to school one day.’ And I said, ‘Mom, one day, I’m going to do it,’ ” Brooks recount­ed.

So in 2020, Brooks enrolled at Alaba­ma A&M again and start­ed tak­ing class­es while work­ing full time.

Brooks said it was­n’t easy, but along the way, his fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly his mom, gave him the sup­port he need­ed.

“When I would get to a point in my study to where I would be like, ‘Oh man, I’m get­ting fogged up study­ing for this exam,’ I would turn around and call my mom… I would just talk to her, and when I get off the phone, things would start click­ing,” he recalled. “I say she was with me every step of the way.”

Last July, months before Brooks was set to grad­u­ate, his mom died.

“When that hap­pened, part of me was like, I was doing this for her, but I switched gears and said, ‘Mom is still with me. There’s no way I’m going to stop,’ ” he said, adding that she left him “right there to just cross the fin­ish line.”

Brooks said he is grate­ful he was able to fin­ish his degree and hopes his sto­ry can help oth­ers real­ize their own dreams.

“What­ev­er you’re try­ing to get to make your­self bet­ter, you’re going to be faced with some type of adver­si­ty, some type of prob­lem, but you got­ta just find it with­in your­self to just keep on going,” Brooks said. “The key is to nev­er stop — and even if you do stop, you can always pick back up where you left off.