That is when it started, my amazing ability to memorize. I found that I could listen while others were reading so I then could memorize what they were saying. This allowed me to slide through school. In high school, I learned to find ways of getting out of school. I found that I could swim and dive. I was the best in town at that time, winning many ribbons and trophies. I had found a way to change their laughing and smirking into cheers and support! I could only do this through my school years. I would soon be faced with real life. I was beating many records in swimming; however, back then we of the darker skin were not recognized as much in sports.
Then it came to me that I could play drums—this became my “safe place.” In joining the marching band I learned that this, of course, would allow me to be excused from many different classes. After all, the band had to practice a lot and go to different sporting events and participate in parades. Then I found myself at graduation day. Standing there I just remember feeling how grateful I was to have it over, not caring that I could not read any better than a second-grader. I was free now to go and live life, or so I thought. I did not realize what the bondage of not being able to read had done to me.
By the mid-eighties, I had spent the last twenty years in and out of bands, traveling around, taking jobs that ranged from flipping hamburgers to sweeping floors. During those years, I learned to dull the fear and the feeling of being dumb by drinking and doing drugs. One night, I was playing drums on a riverboat in St. Louis. I was drunk and pretty high, and did not realize that they had the drummer positioned on a pedestal above the rail; I was jamming, and then all of a sudden I threw my hands up in the air and flipped backwards into the mighty Mississippi River. I sobered up right fast! This made me glad to have my swimming experience.
I married and moved to Michigan, where I was faced with having to change my driver’s license. I remember asking myself, Why did my wife have to ask to see my license? Why couldn’t she just mind her own business?
Finally, tired of hearing her mouth, I pulled out a worn piece of paper from my wallet. As I handed it to her it started to crumble in her hands. She looked at the expiration date that showed 1966, and although it was from the State of Michigan, it was now 1985. She looked at me bewildered, because she had met me in California and knew I was from Alabama.
I remember asking myself, Why can’t she just leave me alone? I remember thinking, I can’t tell her; she will know how dumb I am. I can’t share this secret with her. I love her so much, and why can’t she just leave me alone? I have to get a drink, then I will be able to talk. Maybe she will just go away! She won’t leave me alone. I can drive so why do I need another license? She will know why I always bring things to her to fill out. It has been years of this, and she does not need to know after all these years that I just can’t read. I hate the pain I am placing on her. What did she ever do to me but love and support me? She gave me four great kids; I trust her with my life and yet I can’t trust her with my secret. I can’t take it anymore. She has to be told, and then she will leave me alone. If she chooses to leave me, so be it.
I remember taking her to our bedroom and closing the door behind me. I was so scared. I didn’t want to lose my family. They were all I had. I had to tell her; the fear was raging in me. I could feel the devil himself inside of me trying to explode, “Don’t tell her,” he kept saying. I couldn’t listen. I had to tell her. I remember falling on my knees in front of her, grabbing onto her as if my life depended on it. I was crying now, and she was bewildered; I saw fear in her face. She had no idea what I was about to tell her and she was expecting the worst things imaginable.
I silently prayed, God, please give me strength, while visions of my classmates making fun of me haunted me.
Then, I looked up into her tear-stained face and said, “I can’t go get my license because I can’t read!”
She looked down at me for what seemed an eternity. She pulled my hands to raise me to my feet next to her and wrapped her arms around me, and we cried together. After much release of the years of hiding my secret, she took me and sat me on our bed. We talked for a long time. I was so thankful to have it out.
That night, when the children were in bed, my wife came to me with our youngest son’s reading book. He was in second grade. Who would have known that I would have a chance to start all over again? My wife took me back years so I could start again when I thought my life ended. There was no laughing or teasing. No one else even had to know, just us.
I have my license now, and I keep it up to date. I can read anything put in front of me, though it may take me a moment or two. My children all know of my being consumed with the spirit and bondage of terrible fear. I now no longer drink or do drugs; you see I no longer have anything to hide or to numb. I am free of the one thing that kept me in bondage. God has truly brought me out of my Egypt!
As you read this, please pray for all those around you who you may or may not know, are stuck in the bondage of not being able to read. I’ve learned that “Reading is freedom.”
Howard E. Lipscomb Sr.
From the Mouths of Babes
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
I remember the phone call vividly. I was busy at work as a financial planner when one of the leading African American businesspeople in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, called me. I listened intently as he told me about an opportunity to enter a competition that would enable me to travel to Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa and participate in a study exchange program. It was clearly the chance of a lifetime. As an African American, I was very excited about the opportunity to go to Africa and learn in Malawi and Zimbabwe. However, it was 1985, and apartheid, South Africa’s inhuman system of legalized segregation, was the law of the land. If it had been anywhere else in the world I would have agreed instantly to apply for the trip. However, because it included a visit to racially stratified South Africa, I was very concerned about even applying.
For the rest of the week, I could not concentrate on work. I felt an emotional and intellectual inner struggle. As the son of parents who had grown up in the segregated South and marched with Dr. King, I was very conscious of the racial struggle in America. My consciousness forced me to ask myself some difficult questions. Would I be supporting this horrible system if I went? Or would I be missing an opportunity to educate the racists in Africa and inform the people at home if I did not go? I decided to apply for the trip because I felt that I would be a more effective change agent if I participated. I was fortunate to be chosen to go. However, I was the only African American going out of six participants.
I will never forget how nervous, anxious, excited and scared I was during the seventeen-hour plane ride to South Africa. I could not sleep, because I was trying to anticipate what I would experience during my stay there. Would I be discriminated against? Was my life in danger? Would I stay in the homes of black or white families? Would the black Africans be happy or disappointed to see me? Would I learn the real reason that apartheid is so important to the government? What would life be like in Malawi and Zimbabwe? I don’t recall many details of the plane ride. However, I do remember tears coming to my eyes when I first saw African land. I was returning to the land of my ancestors. I felt a strange connection to the land that was both frightening and wonderful at the same time.
This trip taught me about nature, politics and prejudice. On the sand of Lake Malawi I had one of the best views in the world of a comet that comes around once every seventy-six years: Halley’s Comet. I made history by becoming the first nonwhite to set foot on the floor of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange during trading hours. I watched history in the making as one of the few Americans to witness the coronation of the king of Swaziland. In addition, I learned about the struggle of African blacks during numerous secret—and eye-opening—discussions with members of the banned African National Congress.
The trip was not without some very painful
experiences. I was denied admission to two movie theatres because I was black. I saw restaurant signs that clearly stated that blacks were not allowed to eat there. I heard numerous white South Africans defending the system of apartheid. These experiences drained my spirit. I was beginning to believe that prejudice and hatred are so ingrained in both individuals and families that change was impossible. Just when I was about to give up all hope for reducing prejudice, a ten-year-old girl changed my view of humanity.
I had been looking forward to staying at the home of the former South African ambassador to Bolivia for most of the trip. For the first time I would have the chance to have an off-the-record conversation with someone who had been an influential member of the South African government. I remember thinking, rather naively, that I might have a chance to convince him of the economic and political advantages of dismantling apartheid.
I arrived about an hour after the ambassador and his family had finished dinner. I was exhausted. The trip to their home was very long and difficult. Fortunately, we were able to wear jeans and T-shirts on the trip instead of the official suits we were usually required to wear. As anticipated, the ambassador and his wife were the most courteous and gentle white South Africans that I had met. However, I was surprised to find that they had a very energetic and outgoing ten-year-old daughter who, immediately upon my arrival, attempted to persuade me to play some games with her. Even though I was tired, I gave in to her demands to play word games. She was clearly a very bright young lady who was sizing me up. Naturally inquisitive, she asked me about the domestic chores that I performed in America, attempting to compare me to their family maid and gardener. I spent that evening describing what life was like in America and how it differed from life in South Africa.
The next morning I came to the breakfast table wearing the official business suit that was required for our formal visits. Seeing me in a business suit and recalling our conversation of the previous evening, the girl turned to her father and bluntly said, “You know, Daddy, black Americans aren’t any different than white South Africans.”
It was in that instant that I realized that the only people of color that this young lady, and most white South Africans, had ever taken the time to speak with were family servants. I was the first person of color that she had ever spoken with who had the same level of education and exposure as her parents. Clearly, racial segregation in this country was based solely on ignorance about people of color.
This innocent young child made my trip to South Africa worthwhile. She taught me that there is hope for the world. She was living proof that perceptions and prejudice can be changed by exposure. She realized that you should not judge someone until you get to know them. Who would have thought that one comment from a ten-year-old would change my life forever? So often the best lessons in life come from “the mouths of babes.”
Since that breakfast I have spent much of my life trying to improve society by increasing the exposure of people of all ages, races and religions to each other in an effort to reduce prejudice and discrimination.
Little did I know at the time that this trip would change my view of the world—and perhaps change the world’s view at the same time.
Dale G. Caldwell
Her Little Light Shined
If your faith can’t move mountains, it should at least climb them.
Queen Mother Moore
It was the last place I expected to see an American— especially an African American. And I had no idea how she would soon transform our lives.
On a mountaintop in the Alps, I had come to conduct a wedding ceremony in my adopted country of Switzerland. A young black woman extended her hand as I entered the centuries-old chapel.
“Hello, I’m Brenda, the gospel singer for today.”
“Oh, American?”
“Chicago,” she answered.
“Boston—um, Arthur and I’m the minister.”
She was very nice, but I wondered if gospel would go well here. This, after all, was one of the most conservative corners of old Europe—a place where women first won the right to vote in 1971 and strangers find an uneasy welcome. My stomach tightened as I wondered how Brenda would be received with her gospel style. This was a church where people sit stiffly, do not smile much, and do not clap to the rhythm of any kind of music.
It is also a country where people of color are not always greeted with kindness. Discrimination or outright insults are not uncommon. Now, as my stomach tightened once more, the bride marched into the church and I muttered a quiet prayer that the wedding guests would be kind to the girl from Chicago.
As she stood to sing, the congregation sat motionless with blank faces and I grew even more nervous, but Brenda was undaunted. She gave them gospel as the little village had never heard it before. She closed her eyes, reached down into her soul and took us from the valley to the mountaintop.
By the time her song, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine” was finished, she had shined enough to light up the stodgy Alpine faces. She sang with such talent and emotion that the normally reserved Swiss couldn’t help clapping and joining in, and that day, a transformation took place.
In that magical moment, we knew it was all possible— possible to learn from each other, to love each other, to let the little light shine in every heart.
As if she knew it, she showed us in song. “I love you no matter what,” and they loved her back. When she was finished, the congregation stood smiling and clapping like blacks in church in a steamy Alabama town.
Later, as I was packing my car to leave, a boy said to me in German, “That American woman . . . I don’t know what she said—but I believe it!”
We all believed. And one little Swiss village will never be the same because her little light shined.
Arthur Bowler
7
MAKING A
DIFFERENCE
If anybody’s going to help African American people, it’s got to be ourselves.
Earvin “Magic” Johnson
A Magical Moment with Ali
It’s not what you take but what you leave behind that defines greatness.
Edward Gardner, founder, Soft Sheen Products
In more than twenty years as a sports columnist, I have met and interviewed a who’s who of greats, including “The Greatest” himself, Muhammad Ali.
My greatest memory of The Greatest happened shortly before Ali lit the Olympic flame at the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
The living legend and African American hero—no, American hero—shuffled into the room for an autograph show in the cavernous Anaheim Convention Center, his feet sliding forward slowly and carefully in the unsteady gait of an old man missing his cane.
Ali was only fifty-four years old. Fifty-four going on ninety-four, it seemed. Parkinson’s syndrome had caused a new “Ali Shuffle.”
Still, he remained indisputably the people’s champion. When the doors for the National Sports Collectors Convention opened two hours before his noon appearance, fans rushed to get into a line that grew to three hundred before The Champ’s arrival. Meanwhile, Hall of Fame baseball and football players sat nearby, lonely, with capped Sharpie pens.
Ali’s hands never got a rest, never stopped moving, even when he wasn’t signing endless autographs. His hands shook so uncontrollably it looked like he was constantly shuffling a deck of cards. More “Ali Shuffle.”
And yet from the moment he began signing the cursive M until he had dotted the lower-case I, the earthquake in Ali’s hands magically calmed. Indeed, his signature was smooth and true. Perhaps his neurons and synapses were programmed with a computer-like keystroke after signing his name a million times.
But Ali was no robotic signing machine. He smiled whenever, which was almost always, an autograph seeker paying $90 to have a flat item signed—a whopping $120 on a boxing glove—called him “Champ” or said, “It’s an honor to meet you.”
A steep price for a squiggle of i
nk? Not at all when you consider one man in line called it “a religious experience.”
And every time a camera raised, Ali, his face still “pretty” and his body still muscular and almost fighting trim in a tan golf shirt, would rise out of his chair, slowly but gracefully and without assistance, to pose with a clenched fist held beneath the fan’s chin.
When I had learned Muhammad Ali would be in town, I made plans to take my then-six-year-old son to see him, just as my grandfather once took my dad to see the larger-than-life Babe Ruth in a hotel lobby.
Beforehand, I schooled the boy about Ali, telling him again and again how he was “The Greatest.”
With the handy excuse of me working on a column for the next morning’s newspaper, we hung out right beside The Champ for half an hour as he signed glossy pictures and magazine covers and boxing gloves. Finally, I told my son it was time to leave.
He disagreed.
“Not yet. I’ve gotta say hi,” he whispered, and loudly.
Ali heard the little boy’s protests. The great man turned around and instinctively the little boy stepped forward and extended his right hand. Ali, who had shaken adult hands almost femininely with just his manicured fingertips, took the small hand gently into his big paw and this time it did not look awkward or weak or sad.
And, for the very first time in thirty minutes, the man who used to “float like a butterfly” broke out of his cocoon of total silence.
“Hi, Little Man,” Ali whispered, spreading his arms wide open.
The six-year-old Little Man, who back then was quite shy, instantly stepped forward and was wrapped in a clinch.
But it turned out the real Kodak moment was yet to come.
After a standing eight count or maybe even a full ten seconds, Ali freed the Little Man and then held his right palm out in the universal “give me five” position.