Real Role Models of the future @ I4RC

The Institute for Responsible Citizenship is an organization based in Washington, D.C., that I am extremely proud to support. One of the participants was the first person in his family to attend college and now he's a Rhodes Scholar, another is Truman Scholar.

NY Times: Ravens’ Foxworth Is Building Home Museum to the Civil Rights Movement

September 15, 2009

Ravens’ Foxworth Is Building Home Museum to the Civil Rights Movement

By ALAN SCHWARZ

PIKESVILLE, Md. — With each step down his basement stairs, Domonique Foxworth descends into his own private bomb shelter. Above ground, he earns millions covering the N.F.L.’s top receivers for the Baltimore Ravens. Below it in his cellar, he seeks different company.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has a dream in the cover of an autographed memoir. Malcolm X defies a detractor in a typed letter from 1963. Rosa Parks sits, Tommie Smith clenches and Thurgood Marshall reasons in framed and signed artifacts that form Foxworth’s growing museum of the civil rights movement.

“Other players around the league, their basements are all jerseys of themselves and their friends in the N.F.L. and the N.B.A.,” Foxworth said. “I feel more comfortable with these people around me.”

Later, looking at the collection, he said: “Not often, but on occasion I feel guilty. I have all this because I run real fast and I tackle people. I recognize why I’ve been able to do this. It’s not all because of me or my family or my teammates or my coaches. It’s more because of the faces on the walls in my basement.”

Foxworth’s face would not fit on the N.F.L.’s current Mount Blushmore of Michael Vick, Donte’ Stallworth, Pacman Jones and others. At 26, he has never started a full season. He swallows books whole, is weighing potential business schools and plans to “gobble up degrees” before he retires.

Not just a hobby, Foxworth’s passion for civil rights will inform his handling of the league’s coming labor negotiations, in which he will participate as a member of the union’s executive committee. He candidly, some would say audaciously, vows to speak for forgotten fans and stadium workers “who would be hurt by a lockout more than the players,” he said.

Foxworth has watched the occasional interviewer stop cold when he acknowledges growing up outside Baltimore decidedly middle class. (“They’re like, ‘Where’s the strife?’, and the story mysteriously never runs,” he said.) As he tries to live his N.F.L. life far differently from the public’s image of it, speaking to middle schools and starting nonprofit charities, every now and then he grounds himself. Underground.

“This is the Little Rock Nine,” Foxworth said, pointing to an autographed print of the black students who in 1957 were blocked from attending a segregated school in Arkansas. “All this stuff is really powerful to me. It motivates me. Football and community work and just day to day. To not waste.”

Foxworth’s father, Lorinzo, attended an all-black elementary school in Charlotte, N.C., before joining the Army and raising two sons with his wife, Karen. In bouncing from post to post, the family made sure to tour the local university — Indiana, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, West Point. Perhaps that is why Lorinzo Foxworth, now retired and pursuing a doctorate in business training and development, speaks of his younger son’s “matriculation through life.”

Lorinzo Foxworth said: “But he has a sixth sense we couldn’t impact. He always had a knack for asking the question of why? How does it work? How did it start? And it all ends with something he wants to impact, to manifest in things that matter to him.”

Domonique left high school near Baltimore midway through his senior year in 2001 so he could begin classes early at the University of Maryland. He entered with an interest in computer engineering but was turned on to history and earned a degree in American studies three years later. He did so despite starring on the football team; he was then drafted by the Denver Broncos in the third round in 2005.

Blocked by the Pro Bowl cornerbacks Champ Bailey and Dre’ Bly, Foxworth never developed a consistent role in Denver and was traded to the Atlanta Falcons before last season. He was so quick on man-to-man coverage that the Ravens bought him away as a free agent with a four-year contract worth a guaranteed $16.5 million, and potentially $27.2 million, to tighten what was already one of the N.F.L.’s stingiest defenses.

Foxworth did not splurge on a Lamborghini. He still drives the Range Rover from his draft year. He did call Mark Mitchell, a collector and dealer of African-American memorabilia based in Fairfax, Va., to do his own kind of splurging.

“Professional athletes really have an interest in African-American history, not just for themselves but to pass it along to their families,” said Mitchell, whose clients include the former Washington Redskins Art Monk and Charles Mann and the basketball player Chris Webber. “I find them very intelligent, curious. They’re almost stunned — honored, in a way, to hold in their hands a letter from Frederick Douglass. They have respect for the people who helped bring about the world they live in. You think of athletes as privileged, in a corner by themselves, but they have a curiosity that would surprise people.”

Foxworth’s curiosity will help guide his own playbook for the union-league negotiations; he will be the youngest member of the players’ 11-man executive committee. He said he understood his responsibility to secure the best collective bargaining agreement for his fellow players. Yet he refuses to forget the thousands of strangers — parking attendants, restaurant owners, souvenir hawkers and more — who would be financially devastated by a prolonged lockout.

“It’s not us against the league, who gets the most money — that’s pretty juvenile,” Foxworth said. “We don’t get hurt, we hurt people around us. Obviously it’ll hurt the billionaire owners a bit. It’ll hurt some players who may not get their chance for a life-changing payday. But by and large, the people that we hurt most are just regular people. I just want to introduce that there’s a third party that doesn’t have a voice. Someone needs to remind both of us that this isn’t a game.”

Few people would recognize Foxworth anywhere but his native Baltimore, if there. He is only 5 feet 11 inches and 180 pounds. He avoids telling people he meets what he does for a living because of what he called “the default image that people have of football players, the default story of the life.”

He added, “If I can have a regular conversation on a plane about life and general things, I would much rather do that than have him ask me what it’s like to cover Randy Moss.”

Foxworth says he has no specific plans for retirement, his body tapped but his mind just reaching stride. Get a doctorate or two, he said. Maybe build recreation centers with academic bents. Keep adding to his museum, which he considers less hobby than homage. He wants a Medgar Evers piece. Bobby Kennedy.

Too bad the walls will never include one long-lost item that Foxworth’s father still recalls. When Domonique was 8, just starting Pop Warner football, he walked into his parents’ bedroom with a shockingly good picture he had drawn. It wasn’t Junior Seau or Jerry Rice. It was a parachute.

Obama: "Our kids can't all aspire to be the next Lebron or Lil' Wayne"

Excerpt: "They might think they've got a pretty good jump shot or a pretty good flow, but our kids can't all aspire to be the next LeBron or Lil Wayne. I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers, doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers. I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court justice. I want them aspiring to be president of the United States."

Can You Help Us Help African-American Students?

Friends and Colleagues,

Real Role Models is set to be published next January. Neither Louis nor myself have written this book to make an impact on our wallets, instead believing the biggest impact of this book will be in transforming the lives of Black students around the country, particularly those in impoverished and inner-city settings.

That said, I am asking you to read the note below from Ian Smith, a colleague of mine who runs a foundation that helps underprivileged Black students get a college education, and consider helping us reach our target audience.

***

Joah,

This is an excellent book. I started reading it and could not put it down, seriously. The message this book tells is exceptional. The testimonies from the selected role models will relate to whoever reads this book. The way you used modern people like Charles Barkley and Jay-Z to Kirk Franklin to make certain points will engage younger people to keep reading. Not only that, but there is a need for REAL ROLE MODELS in today's society. Recently, I conducted a leadership workshop and I asked two groups of 13-18 year old students who they thought were leaders. All except maybe 1 or 2 students mentioned athletes and entertainers as leaders instead of themselves, their parents or some of the more influential people in the world like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Our youth today, many value the works of Lebron James and Kobe Bryant more than the works of Dr. King, Malcolm X, Madame C.J. Walker and even Barack Obama. The young people don't understand there is more to life than sports, until it's too late. The huge amount of crime being committed today is unbelievable. I believe this book comes in good timing and hopefully will find some of these young people who is in dire need of some positive influence. Mr. Joah Spearman, thanks for co-authoring this book, its wonderful. I commend you and your colleague for the works of this book, I just hope it reaches the youth before its too late.

Ian Smith

***

If, after reading this note, you think of anyone whom you think would consider recommending the book Ian describes above to a school principal, after-school program leader, nonprofit organization director, business executive, church pastor, coach or community leader...please LET ME KNOW!

My best email is Joah_Spearman@yahoo.com.

Thank you so much.

Joah

Congratulations Louis!

(He's not a self-promoter, but I'll do it for him!)

Harrison Honored for Outreach to Underserved Populations

Dr. Louis Harrison, Jr., was honored with the 2009 E.B. Henderson Award at the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance’s (AAHPERD) National Convention and Exposition on April 4.

The prestigious award is presented annually by the AAHPERD Social Justice and Diversity Committee to one member in higher education who, through numerous years of proven service, dedication, scholarship and mentorship has increased involvement of ethnic minorities and underserved populations in AAHPERD.

Harrison is an associate professor in the College of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction at The University of Texas at Austin. His research has focused on the influences of race related self-schemata and African American racial identity on physical activity choices and performance. The purpose of this line of research has been to investigate factors that influence sport and physical activity participation, as well as identity development patterns of African Americans. Due to his work, physical activity scholars and health professionals have gained a deeper understanding of the racial labels ascribed to particular sports and physical activities and to how these labels affect participation, persistence, effort and performance. Scholars now have a guide that allows them to help underserved minorities develop a physically active.

The award commemorates Edwin Bancroft Henderson (1883-1977), an athlete, basketball pioneer, physical educator, civil rights advocate and author who for three quarters of a century preached racial unity through sports. Henderson is widely recognized by sports scholars and basketball historians as the first person to introduce the game of basketball to African Americans on a large-scale basis. One of his major scholarly contributions was “The Negro in Sports,” written in 1939. It was from this work that sports legend Arthur Ashe built his three volume series on the African American athlete.

NFL Players Being Led By Successful Black Lawyer

DeMaurice Smith, a partner with powerful Washington law firm Patton Boggs, was recently named Executive Director of the NFL Players Association, the union representing all players in the most-lucrative league in professional sports. Smith is a Washington, D.C., native and spent many years in the D.C. legal system after graduating from the University of Virginia's law school in 1989. He has close ties to Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama and is expected to bring a fresh perspective and grounded leadership to the union during a potentially tumultuous time as the NFL's owners and players have yet to reach a contract agreement past 2009, known as a Collective Bargaining Agreement. Aside from his legal work, Smith is also on the Board of Directors for the Good Samaritan Foundation, a D.C.-based organization co-founded by former Washington Redskins player and Hall of Famer Art Monk to assist in fulfilling the educational and social needs of inner city youth.

A Role Model for Young Men and Women Alike

When CNN's Jack Cafferty is raving about you, you know something must be going right for you. That's Michelle Obama these days. Sure, her husband, Barack, became the first Black man to become President of the United States with a awe-inspiring mix of composure, charisma and political savvy, but it's his wife who has wowed Washington with everything from her hospitality to her fashion sense. This is a real role model if I've ever seen one.

A woman who knows her strengths as an individual and professional - she was a senior official at the University of Chicago before going on hiatus to campaign for her husband - and, more importantly, knows the power that comes from her current job as First Lady. Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan each had her own areas of focus and pet projects, but from Michelle we get the sense that the role of First Lady has never been so broad and inspiring. She's a mother of two young daughters, but she's also an adviser to her husband, not far removed from being a state senator in Illinois.

Real Role Models doesn't profile the First Lady, nor any other famous Black professionals, but it goes without saying that she is amongst a select group of nationally-captivating people, the kind of person who not only inspires young black girls, but also black women and not only black women, but women in general. And, I know I'm not the only man who watches her in admiration and awe. Wondering how Barack ever got so lucky. Being her husband, not the president, has to be the most important job in his life.

Secret to Steelers Coach Tomlin's Success: Take Notes

Secret to Steelers Coach Tomlin's Success: Take Notes
By JUDY BATTISTA
The New York Times
January 26, 2009

TAMPA, Fla. — Sometimes in the off-season, he creeps down to the basement in the middle of the night and pulls an old Franklin Planner from the stacks. Pittsburgh Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin — reluctant intellectual — goes back to school then, flipping through the meticulous notes he has kept since he was a youngster, line after line bringing back the memories of what he did in a practice, of how a coach handled a wayward player, of the goals he hoped to accomplish that season.

For years, Tomlin tried to shield his smarts from view. When the “My Child is an Honor Roll Student” bumper stickers arrived in the mail, Tomlin threw them in the garbage before his mother could put them on the car. It was weird, he thought, when his friends first realized in 11th grade that he had gotten straight A’s. Even at William and Mary, an elite college just a few dozen miles from his home in Newport News, Va., he playfully mocked one of his best friends as Poem Boy, only to quote Robert Frost in his news conference after the Steelers won the American Football Conference championship last week.

But those notes in the basement serve as a road map of Tomlin’s meteoric career rise and inform his decisions still. The 1996 volume is a particular favorite because Tomlin was a graduate assistant at the University of Memphis, with the ideal fly-on-the-wall vantage point to observe coaches while bearing few responsibilities. Nobody, save perhaps Tomlin himself, could have imagined that a dozen years later — only two years after he met much of the N.F.L. while pushing his baby’s stroller through the league’s annual meeting — Tomlin would become the youngest Super Bowl head coach in league history.

“Shocked is not a word that I would use,” Tomlin, 36, said of landing the Steelers job in the first place. “I’ve always been extremely competitive. I’m a big dreamer, I guess. I’ve been known to be pushy.”

Tomlin has never lacked for self-assurance. When he told his mother he was forsaking law school to take his first $12,000-a-year coaching job — a decision she thought was insane — he told her coolly that he had a plan. Tomlin’s father, Ed, played in the Canadian Football League, but Tomlin had little relationship with him after his parents separated when he was a baby.

The lure of football came, instead, from neighborhood coaches. Athletics were viewed as a way out of a sometimes difficult neighborhood, Tomlin said, so the coaches became the disciplinarians, the guidance counselors. He wanted to be among them, even if he didn’t need sports to escape. He was a wisp of a high school wide receiver, but he was also quietly stowing recruiting letters from Ivy League programs.

Tomlin wanted to be known as a jock then, not a smart kid, something he knows sounds silly now. But perhaps that was why he could always command a room, able to make the biology students and the offensive linemen equally comfortable.

“He would walk through the door at 10 o’clock at night and light up the room,” said Pete Tsipas, the owner of Paul’s Deli, a student hangout at William and Mary where Tomlin worked the door. “Fifteen years later, he still knows everybody’s name.”

At William and Mary, Tomlin bulked up and became a downfield receiving threat, establishing a team record by averaging 20.2 yards a catch. But football also provided Tomlin an opportunity for the perfect melding of the academic and athletic, and perhaps the underpinnings of his coaching style: he memorized his opponents’ biographies, the better to trash-talk them. Tomlin calls himself a flatliner now, projecting only cool dressed in black on the Steelers’ sideline. But back then, he was emotional — even a little cocky.

“Confidence was never a problem with Mike,” said Minnesota Vikings safety Darren Sharper, a college teammate who was later coached by Tomlin when he was the Vikings’ defensive coordinator. “He would talk trash not only to players, but to coaches. It was a comedy every day. He is always ready to go, trying to get guys to compete.”

Tomlin and his friend and fellow receiver Terry Hammons were fans of NFL Films, and in one they noticed that the great Cleveland running back Jim Brown behaved oddly near the sidelines before games, to unnerve opponents.

“We had such delusions of our own grandeur, we would do these weird drills, we’d get dressed up to our waist, go out with our shirts off, do some push-ups and then start doing ball drills,” said Hammons, who was Poem Boy and is now a lawyer in London.

Hammons calls Tomlin socially intelligent, possessing a knack for knowing what spurs others on. He was the guy singing “It’s a Beautiful Morning” in the bitter cold of an off-season workout. And years later, after Steelers running back Willie Parker complained about play-calling, Tomlin noted in a news conference that Parker wasn’t complaining last season, when he led the league in rushing for most of the year. The zinger delivered, Tomlin made Parker a game captain a few days later.

In college, Tomlin became a voracious student of the voluminous William and Mary playbook and game film, and he offered his suggestions to Coach Jimmye Laycock. For all his chattiness on the field, Tomlin was a deliberate thinker, given, a sociology professor said, to hanging back in an argument so he could analyze data — the thoughtful approach he takes today when talking to reporters.

From his first coaching job, with the wide receivers at Virginia Military Institute, the notebooks filled up quickly, Tomlin’s career buoyed by his amalgamation of smarts and swagger. At the University of Cincinnati — his fifth career stop in five years — the secondary he took over went from being ranked 111th in the nation in pass defense to 61st in his first season. Tony Dungy and Monte Kiffin, then coaching in Tampa Bay, heard about him while they were looking for a defensive backs coach.

After putting Tomlin through a 15-hour interview, Kiffin called the veteran safety John Lynch to tell him about Tomlin’s preparedness and poise, about Tomlin’s attention to technique and his plans for motivation. “Monte said, ‘I have good news and bad news,’ ” Lynch recalled. “He said, ‘I got a heck of a secondary coach.’ I said, ‘What’s the bad news?’ ‘You’re a year older than him.’ ”

Tomlin, then 28, was used to the uneasiness his youth created. When the Buccaneers held a brief minicamp early in Tomlin’s tenure, he had known the players for two weeks. But he presented Lynch, a perennial All-Pro, a tape of 75 plays he thought he could improve on from the year before.

“At first, I thought, What’s up with this guy?” Lynch said. “But then I started reading the detail. He’d show a play, then have a long paragraph about what he thought I could do better. I learned a lot from him right away. That sold me on him.”

The Steelers were a veteran team one season removed from a Super Bowl title when Tomlin got the job Jan. 22, 2007, at age 34. The players were watching him closely. Tomlin ran an intentionally savage training camp to make the point that he was in charge and to help him determine the hardest workers.

Now the Steelers credit him for delegating authority to his assistants, rather than interfering with play-calling, and for easing up on some players as he has grown more comfortable with them.

“I like the head-scratching,” Tomlin said. “I go out of my way to not put them at ease. There’s nothing wrong with being in a permanent state of arousal and not finding a comfort zone.”

That wisdom is undoubtedly jotted in one of his notebooks, which will stretch a little longer for this season. There is no hiding how smart Tomlin is now, but that was never the whole book on him.

A few weeks after he became the Steelers’ coach, Tomlin invited Hammons, a Pittsburgh native and lifelong Steelers fan, to his first minicamp. Tomlin showed him the five Lombardi Trophies. He introduced him to the team’s chairman, Dan Rooney. Hammons was overwhelmed.

“We get out on the practice field, and he’d come over to me and say: ‘You know what, Terry? I could blow this whistle and all of the Pittsburgh Steelers would come running over. Do you want me to blow this whistle, Terry?’ ” Hammons said. “And he just laughs and walks away.”

Obama: A New Kind of Role Model

For the last forty years, since the untimely death of Dr. King, Black America has lacked a true national role model.

Sure, we have shared in the successes of athletes and musicians from Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan to Michael Jackson and Jay-Z, not to mention TV and movie stars like Oprah and Will Smith. But those people, I hate to say, would best be described as celebrity figures then idols then role models.

Not since Dr. King has a Black man been charged with leading all of his kinfolk at once. Young and old, college-educated and non-degree holder, rural and urban, rich and poor. All of these segments of the Black community, and others, were once held within the reach of Dr. King's voice.

On November 4, 2008, a man who has so much (smart, educated) yet so little (politician, half-white) in common with Dr. King made his voice heard. And Black America, albeit a generation removed, stood up and watched Barack Obama pick up the baton that Dr. King had taken from W.E.B. Dubois, his sparring partner Booker T. Washington and their predecessors Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.

Typically relays are run by four individuals, but - as we have learned for the last few centuries - Black America is often required to do more to achieve the same end.

So, running what amounts to the fifth leg, Chicago's favorite son Barack Obama has taken the baton and carried it further than any person of color ever has in this country.

Whether you agree with his policies or not, we can all agree that this moment will forever be remembered as having substantial significance for all Americans with Black Americans, not just African-Americans, at the fore front of that achievement.

With a Kenyan father, Barack Obama is not the traditional Black man in America. He did not live through the segregation that many of our parents and grandparents lived through for his entire life. He did not rise through the political ranks of Chicago and Illinois by being a loud proponent of affirmative action and a staunch opponent of police brutality.

If anything, Barack Obama represents the future of Black America more than most of us ever will. Namely because he represents all of America, which is exactly what Dr. King and those before him struggled so hard to accomplish.

Black America will always admire its athletes, entertainers and musicians, but we are a people best represented by those who seek to serve the public. The best of us are often those chosen to represent all Americans, not just Black Americans. The names Thurgood Marshall and Colin Powell should come to mind.

Like Marshall, Barack Obama used his knowledge of the law to leverage his way up America's ladder to success. And like Powell, he used his skill in Washington to lobby his way up the hearts and minds of Americans.

Now, a generation and some removed from Dr. King's death, we have a real role model who reminds Black Americans that everything feels so much better with a real role model in our lives. Even before we experience the benefits ourselves.

Because for the next 40 years, much like what we saw with Dr. King's emulators, Black boys and girls will strive to be more like Barack Obama. And we'll all be better off because of it.

Chicago Tribune: Election sends right message to young athletes

Election sends right message to young athletes
Chicago Tribune
Rick Morrissey

Over the last few days, black athletes and coaches have lined up to say that Barack Obama's victory in the presidential election proves to young African-Americans that anything is possible.

They should have taken it a step further.

What they should have said, in so many words, was:

Rick Morrissey Rick Morrissey Bio | E-mail | Recent columns

"To the kids who are dreaming of fame and fortune in sports: You have almost no chance of making it to the pros, and your odds of getting a college athletic scholarship are incredibly slim. Don't delude yourself. You're not the exception. You're most likely the rule.

"Play sports for the lessons they teach you about teamwork and effort and life. All those things are transferable to the real world. But there's only one LeBron James, and you're not him. Put down the ball once in a while and pick up a book, the way Obama did. You'll go far."

Deflating? Probably. Unfair? Maybe a little.

But absolutely real.

For too long, too many blacks have looked upon sports and entertainment as the only avenues to achieve huge success. Aided and abetted by coaches, parents and other relatives, they cling to the fantasy of impending wealth and stardom.

In a way, it makes sense. What worked for someone who looks like me and comes from a similar background as me will therefore work for me.

But it doesn't make it any less heartbreaking to watch.

What an opportunity there is now, with Obama preparing to move into the White House. Will kids look up from their pickup games long enough to notice? Will they start to reach higher than a basketball rim?

"What I like about Obama is that, even though his situation might be different from theirs, he did come from humble beginnings," said Louis Harrison Jr., a University of Texas professor who does research on race and athletics. "He wasn't born with a silver spoon. Hopefully, kids will connect with that and see that, hey, here's an opportunity to do something really great, and you don't necessarily have to run fast or jump high to do it."

If a kid comes up short of his goal of becoming a college athlete, his choices might be limited, especially if he hasn't paid attention to school.

If he comes up short of his goal of becoming president of the United States, lots of good can come from the pursuit. Maybe he becomes a doctor, lawyer or businessman. Maybe he makes a nice life for himself and his family.

All of this is coming from your resident white guy, and as such should be taken in that context. I can't begin to understand what it's like to grow up poor with the incredibly difficult challenges many blacks face.

But having just been through the college selection business with one of my children, I know that universities desperately want to increase the number of minority students in their institutions. Scholarships and aid abound for African-Americans.

The problem is that, for many of those kids, the only model they have for going to college is the sports-scholarship model.

Now we have a basketball-playing, soon-to-be leader of the free world who is of mixed racial heritage. The fact he's not like most politicians—the fact he can dribble a basketball without tripping over his feet—has led to all sorts of prose about the president-elect's hoops abilities. But if you have seen his jump shot, you know a basketball career was never in the cards for him.

The important thing is that, somewhere along the way, either he recognized his athletic shortcomings or someone convinced him of them. He went on to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, and the rest is world history.

Sports are not a dead end. They offer us an education of their own. One lesson is that you can't always get what you want. What you do with your life once that lesson sinks in is what really matters. The sooner that lesson arrives for most of us, the better.

Sometimes I hear college coaches talk to children about the importance of academics, and it rings hollow. One look at the graduation rates of college basketball and football programs tells you all you need to know. According to one study, 33 schools in last year's NCAA men's basketball tournament graduated at least 70 percent of their white players. Only 19 schools graduated that many black players.

Lots of kids have been too busy dribbling a basketball or running a football to realize that anything in life is possible. They didn't need Obama's election to tell them that. But it helps. Now all they need to do is look up.

Do You Need an Obama to Believe?

Do You Need an Obama to Believe?
Real Clear Politics
By Larry Elder

"Does Obama's victory, as a black man, make you feel that you can do anything?" Someone asked me that on election night.

It is a caricature of America that, pre-Obama, major obstacles blocked achievement. It is equally a caricature that Obama's win suddenly creates opportunity that did not exist before.

Hard work wins, my dad always told me. My Republican father, who disdained Democrats who "give people something for nothing," taught my brothers and me to work hard, stay focused, live within our means, and at all times avoid self-pity. My mom and dad always said, "Ninety percent of the people don't care about your problems. And the 10 percent are glad it's you."

Born in Athens, Ga., and eventually raised in Chattanooga, Tenn., my dad never knew his biological father. The only father figure in his life was harsh, distant and cold. His mother, because he made "too much noise" for her then-boyfriend, threw him out of the house at age 13.

So this penniless boy, living in the Jim Crow South as the Great Depression loomed, started knocking on doors. He finally got a job running errands and tending the yard for a white family. One day, the family's cook failed to show up. But my dad, having watched her in the kitchen, whipped up a passable meal. The family let the other helper go, and a cook was born.

Seeking more money, my dad applied for and got a job on the railroads as a Pullman porter -- then the country's largest private employer of blacks. He traveled all over the country, making a mental note of California because, he says, its beauty and warm weather seemed open and inviting, and the people seemed more fair.

World War II broke out. My dad enlisted as a Marine. He served as a cook and became a sergeant. The military ultimately stationed him on Guam as we prepared to invade the islands of Japan, an invasion that never took place because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

My dad returned to Chattanooga, where he went to an employment office. The lady at the desk told him he walked through the wrong door, directed him back out to the hall, and told him to enter through the "colored only" door.

"That's it," he angrily told my mom, whom he had just married. "I'm going to California, and in a few days, I will send for you."

My father arrived in Los Angeles and went from restaurant to restaurant to find work. "Sorry," he was told, "you have no references." "Sorry, you have no credentials." "Sorry ..." He, of course, knew why.

He went to an employment office. The woman said, "We have no openings." My dad said, "I'll sit until you do." He sat in that office from opening until closing for a day and a half. Finally, the woman called him to the desk and said: "I have a job. It's for a janitor. Do you want it?"

My dad worked at that job for nearly 10 years, while working a second full-time job for nearly as long and cooking for a white family on the weekends. He somehow managed to go to night school to get his GED and save enough money, while in his 40s, to start a small cafe near downtown Los Angeles.

He ran the cafe, which provided my brothers and me weekend and summer jobs, until he was in his 80s. One day, my dad and I decided to clean out the garage. We found a letter he wrote to my older brother, then 2 years old. My dad said he feared that if something happened to him, my brother would need guidance:

May 4, 1951

Kirk, my Son, you are now starting out in life -- a life that Mother and I cannot live for you.

So as you journey through life, remember it's yours, so make it a good one. Always try to cheer up the other fellow.

Learn to think straight, analyze things, be sure you have all the facts before concluding, and always spend less than you earn.

Make friends, work hard, and play hard. Most important of all remember this -- the best of friends wear out if you use them.

This may sound silly, Son, but no matter where you are on the 29th of September (Kirk's birthday), see that Mother gets a little gift, if possible, along with a big kiss and a broad smile.

When you are out on your own, listen and take advice but do your own thinking and concluding, set up a reasonable goal, then be determined to reach it. You can and will, it's up to you, Son.

Your Father,

Randolph Elder

Dad is now 93 and, thankfully, still with us.

So, yes, Obama's historic victory makes a statement about the long, hard, bloody journey. Obama makes people believe. Some of us always did.

Good read in the NYT

Letter to a Rookie
New York Times
By DOUG GLANVILLE
Published: September 29, 2008

Will Venable
PETCO Park
100 Park Blvd
San Diego, CA. 92101
Skip to next paragraph

The latest installment in an occasional series of guest columns by Doug Glanville, running throughout the 2008 baseball season.


Dear Will,

The other day I received an e-mail from a writer who had interviewed me a couple of years ago for Black History Month. We’d kept in touch, and he was writing to inform me of your promotion to the major leagues.

He also told me that you are the second African-American Ivy Leaguer to make it to that level. And he confirmed something I had suspected but had never fully explored: I was the first.

Putting aside our nasty Penn-Princeton rivalry, I want to congratulate you on your big-league call-up. I remember my first game, in 1996 with the Cubs. It is something you never forget.

I hope you don’t mind me sharing with you a little of what this experience has meant to me.

For the whole of my career, I knew that being an Ivy League graduate in major league baseball made me something of an anomaly. Certainly there have only been a handful of Ivy League baseball players of any culture or race. In the minor leagues, that pedigree wasn’t considered a badge of honor, or even much of an asset. Quite the opposite. The fact that I’d gone to a school like Penn caused question marks to swirl about my “focus” and my “commitment” to the game. After all, I was seen as someone who could walk away at any time (as one of my teammates who’d gone to Stanford did after a demotion).

I had critics say in print that I was “too smart for my own good” or that I “spent more time philosophizing than working.” I recognized that I often asked a lot of questions to get a deeper understanding of some techniques, but I always found it curious that I was accused of thinking I had all the answers and asking too many questions at the same time. I suspect that your path wasn’t a rose-petaled stroll in the park, either. A writer friend of mine, describing how my Ivy league degree was perceived in my minor league experience, referred to my experience coming up in minor league baseball as “Poison Ivy.”

But, unlike the minors, the major leagues can be a great equalizer. Unique backgrounds are seen as points of interest and color that stand out from the usual package. In marketing-friendly America, unique can be a great selling point. I don’t know much about your road to San Diego, but if you carry any resentment at all about being isolated in the minor leagues because of the simple reality of who you are, I hope you can keep that in mind. It got a lot better for me as time went on.

When I was in the thick of feeling alone, I focused on the common path of what we all as players were trying to achieve: loving to play this game and a dream of the major leagues. And despite everything, there was a lot more that brought us together as players than not. I also needed to believe that performing well can trump everything.

Somehow, the bookend of your achievement makes my own experience more tangible. I no longer feel like this phantom of impossibility, as I did from the day I was drafted and signed as a junior in June of 1991. (I did go back to school to get my degree, much to the consternation of some of the powers that be.) What seemed at times to be the equivalent of lightning striking twice has finally happened.

In some ways, embarking on a baseball career is a lonely walk for all players — young men who are often leaving home for the first time — but I knew from the moment I showed up for my first professional game, in Niagara Falls, N.Y., that there weren’t a lot of people who shared my particular experience. I was fortunate to have been raised in a town (Teaneck, N.J.) that embraced ethnic, religious and economic diversity. Otherwise it would have been much more challenging for me to find common ground with my teammates and coaches outside of that ball with the red stitches.

My minor league outfield instructor was the retired major leaguer Jimmy Piersall, and it took the two of us years to figure out how to deal with each other. He would tout his “painter’s son” background while referring to college graduates like me with a word I’d rather not put in this letter. But we found a space where we could connect: in the work ethic required to make it to the top of the profession we both loved. In the end, he became my number-one advocate, despite our diametrically opposed experiences.

I also spent a lot of my minor league career shaking off the exhausted “black athlete” labels of laziness, natural talent and nonchalance. I could only turn to mentors, my family and history to find my path, because there was no one else around who had my specific kind of challenge: bridging diversity, race . . . and academia. So I tapped the same source of strength that helped get my mother and father out of bed every day: they expected a degree of unfairness but knew that the people who had paved the way carried bigger burdens in much more difficult circumstances, enduring challenges just to find a job or to be able to vote.

It was a lot to juggle, but the saving grace was that, in the end, we all had to try to hit that baseball. We all had to perform. In some ways, that is what makes our game so great, it begs people to look beyond certain things because when they don’t, they miss some of its beauty.

I cannot close this letter without emphasizing that we must remember that our Negro League predecessors set the stage, turned on the lights and paid the bill, and now we were able to enjoy performing in the theater they constructed. We need to always keep alive their precious story — which is about baseball, for sure, but also about sacrifice and humility, patience and faith, forgiveness and perseverance. They represent everything baseball should want to be. Everything America should want to be. We are part of their legacy.

Sincerely,

Doug Glanville