ON A PLEASANT morning that fell exactly in the middle of June, the warriors gathered at a catering hall just off Reisterstown Road in Northwest Baltimore.

The warriors filled a ballroom of the Forum Caterers before the clock struck 8. Most of the men were dressed in conservative business suits and ties and had Afros neatly coifed. The women also wore business suits. A smattering of white people attended the affair, the Ninth Annual Scholarship and Awards Breakfast of Black Professional Men Inc.

BPM members, organized 11 years ago, wage a war daily against the Big Lie. It's the lie that says young black men are good for nothing but criminality and failure. It's the lie that says young black men are doomed to spend some time in their lives ensnared in the criminal justice system as either parolees or probationers.

It's the lie that all too many young black men themselves have bought into.

But BPM's members - the 35 who pay the $125 annual dues and the scores who volunteer as mentors - won't have it that way. They've heard the lament of national black leaders that there are more black men in prison than in college. BPM's legions don't wallow in self-pity about that sorry state of affairs. Rather, they are committed to doing something about it.

"They're not just talking the talk, they're walking the walk," said Richard Rowe, a Baltimore businessman and radio talk-show host who acted as master of ceremonies for the scholarship breakfast and awards program. "They're not just talking about the problem. They're doing something about the problem."

They've been doing something about the problem since 1991, when the organization was founded. Over the years, BPM members have held annual "Black Entrepreneurial Weekends" designed to promote and expand African-American business opportunities. They've established a mentoring program designed to steer black middle school and high school boys toward academic success and college.

BPM members have counseled more than 150 young men in the past six years. Some 21 Baltimore and Baltimore County high-schoolers are enrolled in the 2002 Youth Development Program. Five of them - Tavon McGhee, Donyae Blackmon and Adam Dickerson of Polytechnic Institute; David Dawson of City College; and Barry Frederick of Walbrook High School - were awarded $1,000 scholarships Saturday to help with their college expenses.

Dickerson will major in prelaw at Salisbury University. Dawson will take his journalistic talents - honed at Baltimore's hotbed of future journalists (City College) - to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Frederick heads to Capitol College in Laurel as an engineering major. McGhee will be a business major at Glenville State College in West Virginia. And Morgan State University's engineering department will be blessed with Blackmon's academic talent.

Each student received half of the $1,000 award this past weekend. To get the other half, each will have to maintain at least a 2.5 grade point average their first year.

"And don't think that means we find 2.5 acceptable," Rowe admonished the recipients. "We expect better."

All the winners have been part of the Youth Development Program since the sixth grade. Dawson remembers being pulled from his class at Lombard Middle School to meet with BPM mentor Rod Carter in the school library. It wasn't the last time Dawson saw Carter.

"He would show up at the school unannounced to check on me," Dawson said. Carter would also drop by Dawson's house or call. The mentor - who works as an account representative at Capital One Calibration - and Dawson's parents demanded academic success, so much so that Dawson was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Lombard and the 1998 BPM mentee of the year.

Carter and Marlon Tilghman, another BPM mentor, would hold rap sessions with Dawson and other mentees about peer pressure and anger management. There were field trips to museums and plays and, since a player for the Baltimore Ravens is also a BPM member, four outings to home games for the city's NFL franchise.

In addition to the scholarships, BPM handed out community awards to black men "who have excelled in their professions." This year's government award went to Baltimore County Circuit Judge Alexander Wright Jr., who lauded BPM for its work in "reducing the long line of African-American men who come before me."

Let's all tip a hat to BPM, for helping 21 young African-American men refute the Big Lie.