In 1973, Dr. C. Vincent Bakeman and Mrs. Doris M. Lomax gathered on the South Side of Chicago with a group of enthusiastic community advocates who all shared one common goal.
This goal was to address the lack of mental health care services for African Americans: specifically, for African-American males who were stricken with mental illness, disability, and/or incarceration. A study conducted by the Illinois Department of Mental Health had found that the highest recidivism rate for the mentally ill in the state was among young African-American males living on the South Side of Chicago.
Dr. Bakeman and Mrs. Lomax not only developed a solution that addressed these issues, but also created an organization that has since changed the lives of tens of thousands of people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds. On January 22, 1974, Human Resources Development Institute, Inc., was officially incorporated.