Under the baobab: Finding brotherhood, meaning in the fight for justice

I grew up in the 1950s on the Southside of Chicago. Racial segregation and white supremacy were legal and socially acceptable. Trying to survive immersed in the instilled lie of racial inferiority was difficult. I suffered from a minor disability. I was a stutterer. I avoided talking in public. It was tough attending school. I withdrew into a shell. I started ditching classes. Halfway through my sophomore year, I got bounced out.

Fr. George Clements, only the second Black priest in Chicago, who was my mentor, helped enroll me in a Christian Brothers Catholic boys’ school. I was one of a handful of African Americans at the school and the only one in my homeroom. I withdrew even deeper.

One day the English teacher assigned the class to prepare a memorized poem or Shakespearean monologue. I had no idea who Shakespeare was, but we were studying Macbeth, so a monologue seemed like a path of least resistance. I started preparing the dagger speech, which I rehearsed at every opportunity. My mom even had me recite it for her bid whist parties. I was very nervous when the day came for me to perform the monologue. I trudged through. At the end, my classmates gave me a standing ovation. I developed several close friends. We discovered that we had a mutual obsession with the Go-Go White Sox. I exited my shell.

A few years later, Marshall High School, an all Black team, became the public school basketball champs. They were the first Chicago team to win the Illinois State championship. Our school was the Catholic school champ. We were scheduled to play Marshall for the City Championship. We had one Black player. At a rally one of my closest friends shouted, “we are going to beat these n------.” I was stunned. Students near us cheered, which included some of the classmates who had given me the ovation. They expected me to join in the attack with them. I felt wounded, betrayed. I began to distrust white people. I dropped out of school ... again.

In 1963 Fr. Clements took our CYO to Washington for the March for Jobs and Freedom. We heard Rev. Martin Luther King give his “I Have a Dream” speech. It motivated me to join the “movement.” I was one of a thousand students who volunteered for the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) which included NAACP, SNCC, CORE and SCLC. In 1964 a thousand of us went to Mississippi to register Blacks to vote. Seven hundred of those student volunteers were white. White supremacists did not hesitate to attack young Black students in Birmingham with dogs, or lynch Emmett Till, or jail MLK, or to gun down Medgar Evers in his driveway. Some in the leadership believed that racists would not attack young white students. They were wrong.

On the very day that many of the COFO volunteers arrived in Mississippi the KKK with the cooperation of local police kidnapped and lynched James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner. Andy and Mickey were two white brothers from New York. The white supremacists were sending a message — the maintenance of their system of race hatred was more important than anything. They would kill us no matter what color we were.

In the following days there were many heartfelt and hushed conversations. Our parents wanted us to come home immediately. There were gut checks with crises of conscience and courage. Most stayed the course and remained. Facing tyranny, crushed to the ground by bullies, we happy few, Black and white, stood up for freedom and justice. Their love and sacrifice, refreshed my spirit and helped me restore my oppressed soul.

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother;” Henry V, Shakespeare