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6

Slow Awakening

When you feel really low

Yeah, there’s a great truth you should know

When you’re young, gifted and black

Your soul’s intact

—Nina Simone, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” 1970

My sophomore year as a voluntary integrator was a disaster. Seeing my dream of being a havoc-raising linebacker extinguished was difficult enough. But running into the big brick wall of racism was a rude awakening.

It had always been there, weaving its way in and out of our family’s history. I first got a glimpse of this ugly monster in the late 1950s as a seven- or eight-year-old, mostly on Friday nights after the Friday night fights on TV were over, and our fried fish dinner had long since been digested. I saw Mommy and Poppy’s sad faces. They knew full well that their Black, muscular fighters, Sugar Ray Robinson, Archie Moore, and countless others, despite the thrashings they gave their white opponents, had been robbed, cheated out of victory by bigoted referees and judges. They never said anything about it to us kids. They never demeaned whites. They just continued working to provide us with a sense of freedom that they and their parents never had.

Poppy would come home from work at Boeing filled with rage from dealing with some petty racism. One day while he was driving home and stuck in traffic, someone drove by and shouted, “Nigger!” Poppy lost his cool, got out of his car, grabbed rocks, sticks, anything he could throw, and propelled it all after the bastard, who was long gone. Had he been able to get to the white man, Poppy would surely have hurt him—which is exactly why Poppy never owned a functioning gun and never wanted one around. I could understand why, when he came home, he reached for a highball. It helped to defuse the anger, to hold at bay the deep rage and the memories of war.

Mommy also had her share of stories of being told lies such as “No, we don’t have any jobs open,” despite a sign stating the contrary. And down from our house, there was the Lake Washington Realty office on the corner of 34th and Union, with the little, skinny, pale, spectacled white lady behind the desk who let it be known that she did not do business with Blacks or Asians. As kids, we knew every other business owner in Madrona on a first-name basis, but we never ventured inside that real estate office.

For the most part, Seattle was different from a lot of places in the United States at the time. Racism was not out in the open, staring you in the face, thrusting you into confrontations or forcing you to question your own integrity. Nevertheless, it was there, hidden, mostly in faraway neighborhoods, in the souls and the hearts of misguided, miseducated, and misinformed white men and women. I remember listening to the older teenagers in the neighborhood as they shared their battle stories of venturing out of the Central District, our safe haven, going to neighborhoods like Ballard, Queen Anne, and Shoreline, and being attacked by bat-waving, “nigger”-yelling white boys—and how, afterward, they would load up in three or four cars and drive back out to seek revenge. Always carry a bat with you, they said, and be ready to run. Then there was the unsettling story of the Black lady raped by a gang of white policemen, with nothing ever said or done about it, which created a sense of helplessness in our young minds.

At the end of one of our summer trips, we were driving back from Chicago. Poppy had driven the length of Montana, a grueling stretch. We reached Deer Lodge, a small cowboy town. Poppy spotted a motel with a “Vacancy” sign, pulled into the lot, and went in. He was dog-tired and limping from a ruptured Achilles tendon, which he had injured before the trip.

When the man at the front desk told him he didn’t have any rooms available, Poppy got that crazy look on his face. It was the kind of look that a man gets when he has had enough of talking and is prepared to take action, like I will tear you and this motel apart if I don’t get a room. I’m not sure what Poppy said, but he put it to this jag-jaw cowboy in no uncertain terms that he was tired, his family was tired, and he’d better get a room or else. Later that night, as Poppy, Elmer, Michael, and I walked to a nearby store, the sheriff followed us around, peeping at us from behind corners as if we were going to blow up the town.

Up on Madrona, we kids were largely insulated from the tentacles of racism. It was only when we ventured out that it reached us. Sometimes when we had softball games in a distant, white, working-class neighborhood, things got tense. Sometimes the older kids got into fights. Or there were the questionable ball calls that always went against us. Over time, we seemingly became conditioned to such things.

The biggest slap in the face came after our tennis team qualified for the Parks Department city championship, which was held at the Seattle Tennis Club, a prestigious club on Lake Washington. Only a few years earlier the same club had denied access to the greatest Mexican American tennis player of all time, Pancho Gonzales. Everybody on our tennis team was Black, with the exception of one Jewish boy, Marty, who always wore a yarmulke. Nobody was sure where Marty went to school and we didn’t know the actual location of his house. We just knew he was a heck of an athlete, and we were always glad to see him up at the park. He was a phenomenal left-handed quarterback, a solid pitcher on the softball team, and one of the better singles tennis players in our age group up at Madrona.

I don’t think the Seattle Tennis Club was prepared to have a young all-minority team competing on their clean, smooth, green courts, and they were even more surprised when we took first place, soundly defeating all comers. Besides receiving trophies, we were supposed to get lunch in the club dining room and a free swim in the Olympic-sized pool. To our astonishment, with the exception of Marty they would not allow us in the restaurant or the pool. Instead, they brought hot dogs out to us and directed us down to the beach, while we watched the white kids we had defeated being led into the club dining room. In the moment, we were so excited about our victory we didn’t have time to think about what they were doing to us, but Elmer and I would not forget.

At Queen Anne, my 2.5 grade point average plummeted to a 1.5. My typing teacher flunked me because my wrist, badly sprained from playing football, made typing impossible. My math teacher, who never answered my questions, gave me an E—the equivalent of an F, or Fail. Many of the kids I had known and played with at Denny Blaine the year before were now distant and unfriendly.

A turning point came in late February of my sophomore year, during the city high school basketball championship game, held at Hec Edmundson Pavilion at the University of Washington. Garfield, the predominantly Black school my neighborhood friends attended, was playing against Queen Anne, the all-white school where I was enrolled. The game seesawed back and forth, going down to the wire. I sat with my friends on the Garfield side, stomping our feet as we cheered our Black warriors to victory, holding our breath, our hearts in our throats, wondering if victory would be denied as it so often was. When Black folks competed against whites in sports, it represented much more than a sporting event—it was a declaration of equality, a silent demand that one’s right to exist be recognized.

With five seconds to go, Garfield had a three-point lead and had the ball. We were all sitting there, wondering what could go wrong. Garfield had been denied the city championship so many times in the past. Then, right before our eyes, it happened. A phantom foul was called on a Garfield player, giving the ball back to Queen Anne. And the referees even added another five seconds to the clock. Queen Anne ended up winning the game by one point. We were stunned, outraged at how blatantly victory had been stolen out of the hands of the Garfield players. I went home feeling very sick about the injustice of the game.

When I went to school the next day I noticed that a lot of students were absent. I also noticed that the white kids were looking at me strangely, staring at me like I had shit on my back. During the course of the day I heard stories of how the white kids from Queen Anne were attacked and beaten after the game, some dangled from the Montlake Bridge, others chased to unsuspecting homes. The Black Garfield students had gone on a rampage, declaring through their actions that they would no longer tolerate blatant racism without there being some form of retribution. The remainder of my year at Queen Anne was very tense. The handful of Black students stayed closer to each other, everyone vowing not to return the following year. The rivalry between Garfield and Queen Anne had always been intense. After this incident, whenever we played on each other’s turf, violence broke out.

In 1966, my junior year, I gave up on voluntary integration and came back to the community to attend Garfield, where Quincy Jones had honed his musical skills, where Jimi Hendrix was enrolled before dropping out to embark on his quest to become the most famous guitarist in history, and which Bruce Lee had adopted as his own. Though not an alum, Lee had developed an attachment to Garfield, with its wonderful mix of Black and Asian and white students. He lived in Seattle for several years and often came by to greet some of his martial arts students or simply to hang out.

Garfield’s student body was mostly Black and the rest a mix of Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, and whites. The staff was well-blended, with whites, Blacks, and a few Asians. In many ways it was the ideal school for the ’60s—a place where no matter your color or beliefs, you could feel free to express yourself. Here were the best musicians, the best athletes, some of the city’s best teachers, the best example of racial harmony, and a rich tradition of openness. It was here at Garfield that my identity had an opportunity to grow and flourish. I could explore and search, discover who I was and why I was here on this earth. I found a new circle of friends, and over the next couple of years we played sports together, got drunk together, and philosophized about our future and the world.

At Garfield, there were old-school teachers and new-style, “hip” teachers. The old-school teachers, some of whom carried paddles, went around intimidating students. The new style was embodied by Mr. Peoples, the young, white, sharply dressed math teacher and track coach who was much better at teaching us about social development and dressing well than teaching math. He was very well-liked by the students and was able to set a good example for us young guys because he acted like one of us. On the other end of the spectrum was Mrs. Hundley, a tall, light-skinned Black woman who never smiled. The word was out that she did not take any mess. There was no idle chatter or laughter in her class. She got the most out of you, whether you wanted to give it or not. A throwback to the old days when Black folks relied on their own initiative, understanding that hard work paid off, she was easily the best teacher I ever had. We read the classics and through her I learned the love of literature.

Mrs. Woodson, the tall, Black, rail-thin student counselor, called me into her office one day during my senior year. I had been skipping a lot and getting into some trouble—for example, being kicked out of art class for starting a clay fight—and being sent to study hall far too often. Mrs. Woodson had never said much to me. But what she said that day angered me and woke me up.

She said, “Aaron, you are not going to college. You are just not college material.”

Those words stuck in my mind like lead. Mommy and Poppy had always told us we were going to college. I guess I had just assumed that I would go. But my GPA at that point was a pitiful 2.0, not high enough for me to be accepted into college.

Not only was my GPA merely average, but I was also short on credits, meaning that if I failed or dropped even one class, I would not graduate. I knew that Mommy and Poppy would not be pleased with that. But it was the words of Mrs. Woodson that burned inside my head. I realized I had to buckle down, and the remainder of the year I did. I still worked at Swedish and had fun with my friends, but I made sure my studies were taken care of. Even so, I still did not put in a lot of time on homework, doing most of it during school so it would not interfere with those long hours up at the Madrona basketball and tennis courts.

Besides hanging out with my friends, sports were the most important activities in my life. By now, football had taken a back seat to basketball and tennis. Every warm day during the school year, the ballplayers congregated up at Madrona Park. College players from Seattle University, high school players for Garfield and Franklin, varsity rejects like me and my buddies Mike Dean and Chester and Michael Childs, we were all there, waiting for an opportunity to get on the court and show our skills, waiting for winners, sweating, pushing, shoving, jumping, scoring, rebounding—and sometimes fighting. I had become known for my rebounding, my fearlessness beneath the boards, and my tenacious defense against older and bigger opponents. Sometimes we were out playing until sunset. Some of the guys even stayed out way past nightfall. I remember lying in bed, hearing the sound of the leather ball bouncing on the concrete, and wondering who was still out on the court. Sports had become an increasingly important focus for me at this time. They gave me a sense of purpose; I could direct all my energy onto the basketball court, the tennis court, or the football field. I was fearless when playing sports—it was the one area where I had almost complete control and a healthy confidence in my abilities. But there were other, more important things on the horizon for which my skills would prove to be best suited.

Something was brewing in America, something that had begun hundreds of years earlier when Black slaves were brought to the shores of the New World. It was something unavoidable, something that could no longer be held down. The Civil Rights Movement of the ’50s had ushered in the beginning of the end of segregation and outright racial discrimination. And it was my generation—not only young Blacks, but also young whites and other young people of color—who sat at home watching the shaky black-and-white television images, steadied by rabbit-ear antennas, of Southern Blacks integrating universities, schools, buses, restaurants, movie theaters: establishments and institutions that had failed to recognize Blacks as equal human beings. These images penetrated our young minds, informing our visions of our future.

The ’60s had begun with one of the most unsettling events in US history, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Kennedy, the first Irish Catholic president, embodied possibility and hope, a break with the conservative ’50s and President Eisenhower. To many Black people, Kennedy represented an opening, a ray of light on a dark, ugly past. Many felt that at last there was someone in the White House who understood us, who cared about us, who spoke with his own words and not those of the power- and money-hungry moguls that infested the political scene. We had been lied to for so long. Finally, we thought we would get the truth.

But Camelot was short-lived. On November 22, 1963, thousands of Americans gathered in starched dresses and pressed slacks and ties to watch their beloved president’s car pass by in Dallas. Millions of other Americans were watching the parade on TV in their homes. Suddenly Kennedy slumped over onto his wife’s lap with blood gushing from a bullet wound to his throat. Americans were in shock, stunned as they witnessed their president being shot in front of them, out in the open, in broad daylight. It was a heavy, terrible day. Like most of my peers, I was too young to comprehend the events that happened before our eyes, but our parents’ sorrow and despair was transferred to us. It was the first and only time I saw Poppy cry, crying in anger, throwing chairs, books, barely able to hold himself up under the strain and sorrow.

Little did we know that 1963 marked only the beginning of a very violent decade. Earlier that same year, Medgar Evers was assassinated. Evers was as important to the Civil Rights Movement as Martin Luther King Jr. and had become familiar to every Black home in America. His leadership and tenacity would never be with us again. In 1966, the most feared Black man in America was assassinated: Malcolm X, tall, persuasive, sharp, strong, fearless, a brilliant man many of us had not even had the opportunity to know. It was only afterward that we realized we’d had a genuine diamond in our midst, an authentic Black American hero who could have helped shape a positive future for this country.

A year earlier, in 1965, white policemen in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles stopped and arrested a Black motorist, Marquette Frye, on suspicion of driving under the influence and proceeded to beat him violently as well as his mother, who lived nearby and tried to intervene. It was also rumored that, in the preceding days, the Watts police had roughed up a pregnant Black woman. These events ignited the first of many violent riots to rock the nation. The Watts Uprising woke up America. Blacks rioted for five days, burning down establishments that had exploited Black people far too long, sniping at racist cops, rampaging through the streets, liberating TVs, clothes, food, and guns, throwing Molotov cocktails, leaving behind a wasteland.

Thousands of miles away, young Americans were being sent to hostile, hot jungles, armed with M-14s, trained to kill Vietnamese men and women because they dared to fight for the unification of their country. Older boys I had grown up with were now absent from the neighborhood, no longer on the basketball court or the football field but in the trenches, muddy, bloody, and slowly becoming bloodthirsty for an enemy they did not know. Many would never return.

I managed to stay disconnected from all the chaos, yet it was slowly seeping into my subconscious. In other parts of the country, new Black organizations were sprouting up. Black Nationalism, which rejected white culture and made its primary concern the improvement of the conditions of Black people, was just beginning to emerge. Its focus was on Black independence and self-determination.

One day I was out on the tennis courts perfecting my serve and my net game, aspiring to be the next Arthur Ashe, the first Black male professional tennis player. Mommy called out from the porch as she usually did that dinner was ready. I remember walking by the TV as the six o’clock news was broadcasting. Walter Cronkite was reporting that in Sacramento some Black men with guns had invaded the California capitol building. After dinner, as I walked back out to the tennis courts, I thought briefly about the image of the Black men with guns, feeling a tinge of pride and amazement. Then I forgot about it, yet the image stayed in the back of my mind.