41 Seniors Get Funds for College : Scholarships: Post-riot program will pay tuitions for low-income students at black schools.

United Negro College Fund President William H. Gray III preached a rousing sermon at First African Methodist Episcopal Church on Sunday, awarding 41 Los Angeles high school seniors four-year scholarships to the fund’s historically black colleges.

The scholarships for the low-income students were the first to be awarded as part of a program launched after the Los Angeles riots by Gray, a leading Democratic congressman who left the House of Representatives in 1990 to take over the college fund.

The program, Ladders of Hope, targets students who have neither exceptional grades nor high test scores but are judged by teachers and community leaders to have potential. The goal is to “rebuild Los Angeles through education,” Gray said. Although all minority students are eligible, the program is geared to African-Americans.

“We want them to understand that they have contracts not just with Morehouse and Tuskegee, “ Gray said, referring to two of the college fund’s 41 member institutions, “but they’ve got a contract with the community, knowing that when they are the new leaders, they’re going to come back home--come back and give back.”

Corporations and community business leaders have donated $1.3 million to the program. As a result, in addition to full tuition for four years, scholarship winners, who come from eight Los Angeles high schools, will leave for college this fall with new luggage, donated wardrobes, airline tickets and even telephone calling cards.

“We want them to come back, but we want them to go in style,” Gray told the packed church.

The campaign to raise $5 million for the Ladders of Hope program was announced in September by Gray, Mayor Tom Bradley and more than two dozen educators and business leaders.

Sunday’s service also marked the close of a three-day regional conference of the Congressional Black Caucus, held to give Los Angeles residents and community leaders an opportunity to meet with the nation’s black House members. Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), Walter R. Tucker III (D-Compton) and Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles) attended.

This was the first of a series of regional conferences that Black Caucus members hope to hold around the country, Waters said.

Workshops held Friday and Saturday included sessions with reformed gang members and one to help entrepreneurs and activists find funding.