'Empowering:' Morehouse Prof Cares For Student's Baby In Class

ATLANTA — A photograph of a Morehouse College math professor holding one of his student's babies in class so the infant's father could take notes has gone viral over the Internet. On Friday, student Wayne Hayer brought his 5-month-old daughter, Asada, to class, because he and his wife were in a bind. Hayer, who is holding down two jobs while studying kinesiology at Morehouse, didn't want his wife riding public transportation with the child while running an errand to pick up Asada's birth certificate.

Hayer told his math teacher, Nathan Alexander, about his dilemma, and Alexander told him to bring his daughter to school if needed. The couple was unable to find someone to care for Asada, so Hayer dressed Asada in a pink sweater and a hat, and packed her blanket in his backpack.

“I was apprehensive about it,” Hayer told the Washington Post. But Alexander welcomed his student and his daughter into the class, and held Asada, telling her father, "I'll hold her so you can take good notes."

In a Washington Post interview, Alexander said, “Our goal is to instill leadership in our students. I want to be a model of that, and I think Wayne is a model of that. He was focused on his academics in spite of everything else he had going on."

"There’s a negative stereotype about African American men not being fathers to their children and a myth that most black people come from single-parent households,” Hayer said.

“To see a young African American man do it was empowering for people to see. The image and symbolism were important in changing how we view masculinity.”

Classmate Nick Vaughn posted a photo of the scene on Facebook and Twitter that has since been seen by hundreds of thousands of people on social media.

Morehouse College, which just celebrated its 152nd anniversary, is a historically black men's college in southwest Atlanta's Cascade community.

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