From Unpaid Labor’s blog entry entitled Nat Turner and Unpaid Labor’s Spiritual Contribution, “Reading on, one discovers a man (Nat Turner) who was a child of superior intellect who never knew a time when he did not know the alphabet. One discovers a man of fasting and prayer who knew the scriptures. One discovers a man with a religious calling. One discovers a man with an inquisitive mind, an observant mind, and a man of moral excellence. One discovers a man with a lifelong purpose. One discovers an enslaved man who was never a slave.” How remarkable! An enslaved man--with all of him enslaved except his soul, his spirit, and his mind!

Fast forward from 1831 to 2016. College students from every “racial” background understand that in today’s economy more education means more success. Education was not available to Nat Turner but it is to his people in 2016. But there’s a problem. The cost of a college education is so high that it is out of reach for most young people--unless they borrow to pay for it. But unlike Nat Turner of yesteryear, modern day Nat Turners can improve their minds in college by getting others to pay the cost. How can that be you may ask?

Meet Christopher Gray, CEO and Co-Founder of Scholly! Scholly is a mobile app. It gives students a fast and simple way to find scholarships for college. The app is available on iOS and Android for only 99 cents! Information on thousands of scholarships worth millions of dollars is available on Scholly to help you pay for college. You put your information in and Scholly tells you what scholarships you qualify for after it searches a database of over 20,000 scholarships. You still have to put in the work to apply for the scholarships like Mr. Gray did. His idea for the app came from applying for and winning $1.3 million in scholarships.

And if you’re afraid of hard work, remember Nat Turner. He was a child of superior intellect who never knew a time when he did not know the alphabet. He lived at a time when it was illegal for an enslaved man to know how to read. He lived at a time when it was illegal to teach an enslaved man to read. He lived as a member of that great group of people whose contribution was indispensable to the United States becoming the most successful nation in modern history, even though they were Unpaid Laborers.

You can do it too. Education is not the answer to everything but we know Nat Turner today largely because he was an enslaved man whose mind was free.

Photo Credits: dccollegecounseling.com and scholly.com