The New Hue; Meet Anthony Bradley

Photograph by Chris Braggs. What would you tell your 17-year-old self?

"If I could tell my 17-year-old self anything it would be you are absolutely fine just the way you are.

There was a lot of confusion back then for me. I grew up in the thick of it. I saw a lot of friends doing a lot of different things and I saw a lot of poeple taking a lot of different paths. There was a lot of influence.

When I was 17, I was a senior in high school. I think it's the first time in that age, you are forced to make a lot of decsions on your own.

I had an early idea of who I was.

I learned later on that I am absolutely fine just the way I am."

Anthony Bradley does not remember the first time it happened -- the treatment that was different, the betrayal, the racism. At some point along the way, he made a choice.

“I control the controllable,” he said. “I realize you can’t change how a person feels in their heart at all, but you can maintain who you are through that.”

Bradley worked at a construction company for 12 years.

“For a long period of time, I was the only black guy working,” he said “It was a black-owned business.”

“I experienced everything across the board, from love to racism.”

He chose to look at the whole experience and allow it to let him grow.

“I think it was the guys putting me through training for where I am right now in my life,” he said.

Right around the time that his friend Chris Braggs approached him about The New Hue, Bradley was looking to open his own construction business - giving two weeks notice to the company for whom he had worked for more than decade.

“I really had no idea what we would be birthing with The New Hue,” he said. “Chris is one of those guys that I know is about positivity.”

The more he explained his vision, the more it was a no brainer, because what we were talking about is the successes that are not celebrated.”

Bradley is married with two young children. He now owns his own successful construction company and is sometimes amazed at the reaction he gets to that reality.

“As black man in this generation, in this time, the average successful black man is not celebrated,” he said. “The guy who stayed out of trouble, kept a level head, the guy who made a choice to work hard... keep positive people around him.”

Bradley remembers sharing information about his construction company with a white man and was met with a sort of disbelief.

“I recall telling stories to a couple people and their eyes being so wide,” he said. “For black men, the way we are looked at, it almost can become the norm.

“My life right now is so abnormal to some young black teenagers that I talk to; they’re as surprised as some white men.”

Like the other members of The New Hue, Braggs, Donnis Draper and Courtney Ellis, Bradley attributes some of his success to the men in his life who served as mentors growing up.

“My father was the hardest working man I have ever known in my life,” he said. “He always told me, ‘son you have everything you need within yourself to be anything you want to be.’

“Don’t wait for confirmation [from] anybody else. Go out and get it.”

Bradley’s father lost his battle with cancer in 2015.

“With losing him, it gave me everything I needed,” he said about taking a leap and opening his own business.

But that is not enough to change the dialog about black men in America.

“I think a lot of it is the perception of what is said through social media, through entertainment,” Bradley said of the presumptions he sees and has experienced. “What our children and the younger generation is constantly seeing is negativity; everything that is negative about black men.”

“We never talk about the guy who’s taking care of his kids, the husband, the mentor

There are so many of us. It’s not just the four or five of us. There so many hues that need to be spotlighted.” To see the rest of Anthony Bradley's photo shoot, click here.

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