This paper focuses on how community educators might collaborate to help break the cycle of frustration, failure, and violence that shadows many disadvantaged inner-city African American students. It suggests that persistent, race-based inequities in urban areas are a major factor in this syndrome. These causes are proposed to be disparity in education, housing, economic opportunity, and political representation. The paper suggests that a deeper understanding of these ongoing issues is a key to educating these particular students. Specifically, it explores a collaboration between Cincinnati Museum Center, The Arts Consortium of Cincinnati, and the University of Cincinnati College of Education following violence in the city in 2001, and it traces some impacts of that effort. (Contains 7 endnotes.)