Thank you, Dr. Pfeiffer. After an introduction like that, I can’t wait to hear what I have to say.
It is a privilege to be here tonight and I promised my cousin, Julius Stuart, a student here, that I wouldn’t make the same mistake another friend of mine made one time. When he started his speech, he asked: "Can those in the back hear me?" Somehow – don’t ask me how – the people in the back replied, "No!" As soon as they said, "no," people in the first five rows got up and moved to the back. So if you can’t hear me in the back, keep it to yourself.
As was noted in the introduction, in addition to being a journalist, I am a public speaker. I’ve been blessed to have been able to speak at some of the greatest universities in the nation – Harvard, Yale, Columbia and now Warren Wilson as a Fellow at the G.D. Davidson Roundtable. In preparing for this speech, I learned that the Sierra Club has named Warren Wilson one of the 10 coolest schools in the fight against global warming. Now, that’s really cool. I also learned that WWC stands for: "We Work Constantly." In many ways, tonight’s challenge is perhaps the most difficult one I’ve faced as a speaker because it forces me to look inward, to be reflective, and to share the ups and downs of my life.
I understand that the Davison family had planned to be here, but one had a board of trustees meeting at Davidson College. I have been following "March Madness" and understand that Davidson is still a contender. And the last time I check, there was no board of trustees meeting at the site of the NCAA regionals. But I am going to take him at his word that he is attending a board of trustees meeting.
This is a unique exchange and it is certainly something I wish I had been exposed to as a student at Knoxville College next door in Tennessee or the summers I spent studying at Harvard and Yale.
I would also like to thank President Pfeiffer for extending the invitation to speak here and Julie Lehman for making my trip here possible. Julie, is one of the most efficient people I have ever worked with and I thank you, Julie, for it. I’ve already mentioned the third co-conspirator was my cousin, "J.D." Stuart, who suggested to Julie that the college consider bringing me here. So, thanks Cuz.
Our family is so close that cousins are like brothers and sisters. J.D.’s father – I guess I should call him "Julius" since he’s a college student now – Charles and I are first cousins. Our mothers are sisters and I’m leaving here tomorrow night for Johnson City, Tenn. to help celebrate my aunt’s and Julius’ grandmother’s 90th birthday.
As close as I am to my family, I am going to share some things tonight that even "Julius" doesn’t know about my background.
By far, my most vivid childhood memory is also my most painful one. More than anything else – I must have been 4 or 5 years old at the time – I remember seeing my mother returning home, after working as a domestic all day. Although only two people were in the car, my mother had to ride in the back seat of the car.
Even at that young age, I knew something was wrong with that picture. If my mother was good enough to clean your house, good enough to cook your food, good enough to clean your clothes, she was good enough to ride in the front seat of your car. That was what I thought at the time and that’s what I still think today.
I am the oldest of four children and the only male. I told my younger sisters when they were old enough to understand that they should never forget that sight because none of us were going to be subjected to that kind of humiliation. I told them we were all going to go to college – I didn’t know how –but were going to avoid having that scene replayed in our lives. Neither of my parents went to college – my mother went to the 8th grade, my stepfather went to the 5th grade and my biological father went to the liquor store. I’ve not always been able to laugh about that, which I’ll tell you about later.
You weren’t born then, so let me tell you what life was like for an African-American growing up in Alabama, as I did, or North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi or anywhere else in the Deep South.
Keep in mind that I am 61 years old. I like to tell people that I am approaching 50 – but I don’t tell them from which direction.
What I am describing are real events that happened in my life, not something I read in a history book or saw on TV in "Eyes on the Prize." I lived this and I began living this before there was a modern Civil Rights Movement.
Another thing I distinctly remember from my childhood was having to ride in the back of a segregated bus. Now that I’m talking about it, I had a thing about riding, whether it was in a car or on a public bus. I might have to stop by the psychology department to find out what this fixation on transportation means.
Anyway, as a young kid, I wanted to ride in the front of the bus, directly behind the driver. But there was a line on the floor indicating that blacks – we were called Negroes then – had to ride or stand behind that line. It didn’t matter if the so-called white section was empty; Blacks still had to ride in the back.
Later, when I was a teenager, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would come to Tuscaloosa to help us desegregate the bus system. When I was older, I was able to sit anywhere I wanted to on the bus. By then, I didn’t even want to ride the bus. Like most teenagers, I wanted a car.
I’m not going to talk about my childhood all night, but I want to make two other points before I move on. In order to fully appreciate what I’m going to say later, you need to know where I came from. You need to know the events that shaped my life. And more important, I want to help you think about how you can handle challenges you’re facing today or will face tomorrow.
That’s the whole purpose of this exchange. I’m not trying to make anyone feel guilty and these are not experiences I enjoy talking about. They were extremely painful but thank God, I got through the pain.
It pained me to be forced to drink from "colored" water fountains. Actually, I can think of only a few times I drank from the colored water fountains because I would rather wait or die of thirst than to be humiliated. A few times, I drank from the "white" fountain until store managers chased me away.
My last point on discrimination I faced as a child, ironically, involves journalism. The only time The Tuscaloosa News carried stories about African-Americans was when they were accused of committing a crime, played sports or were entertainers. One reason I decided to become a journalist – a decision I made in the 8th grade – was because I recognized there were many more stories in our community and I wanted to tell them.
In addition to proving limited coverage of the black community, the Tuscaloosa News carried segregated classified ads – I still have some that I have kept for more than 40 years. The paper carried such ads as, "White Christian woman wants roommate" and "Colored delivery boy wanted."
On top of that, you had ministers coming on TV and saying, "If God had wanted us to be equal, He would have made us the same color."
Robert Shelton, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (United Klans of America), lived in my hometown.
Considering what I have shared with you so far, my next statement will shock you: I had a great childhood and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. Now I know you think I’m off of my rocker. But before you commit me to a mental institution, let me quickly explain –and I do mean quickly.
I decided at an early age that I wouldn’t let others define me, whether they were white, black, relatives, neighbors or strangers. I was determined that I would define who I am – no one else.
When you adopt that attitude, it doesn’t matter what anyone says about you. They don’t have the power to make you think poorly of yourself because you don’t give them that privilege. Only you define who you are. That truly liberates you.
The reason I can say I had a great childhood was because people in my immediate community showered me with love. My heroes then and now are not famous people.
I’ve met quite a few celebrities: Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, Martin Luther King, Jr.; four presidents (Carter, Bush I, Reagan, Clinton), as well as the three remaining candidates left in the presidential race. I’ve met Bishop Desmond, Tutu, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Bill Gates, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Maya Angelou, Johnnie Cochran, Jamie Foxx, Jim Brown, Danny Glover, PDiddy and so many others.
As someone said, celebrities are well known for being well known. They aren’t my heroes. My heroes and she-roes are ladies I called by their first names – Miss Dot, Miss Bernice, Miss Lula Mae, Miss Murt Lee, Miss Hazel, Miss Lottie and Miss Willie Mae. And there were men – Mr. Glynn, the head of my housing project; Mr. Hughes, my high school principal; and Henry Holbert, my high school football coach.
Those were the people who influenced my life. When I go back to Tuscaloosa, I don’t visit my classmates. Instead, I visit those ladies because they believed in me before I believed in myself.
I had all of these people pushing me, telling me that I could do anything I was capable of dreaming. They taught us to be twice as good as any competitor, black or white, and expect to receive half the credit.
Our teachers instilled in us the value of hard work. They told us to always give at least 100 percent. And when I say 100 percent, I don’t mean 20 percent on Monday, 15 percent on Tuesday, 25 percent on Wednesday and so on until it adds up to 100 percent for the week. No, I mean 100 percent, every time, every day.
As smart as you may be, there will always be someone else out there smarter. But no one should be able to outwork you. That’s one of the keys to being successful – you should be working while your competition is sleeping.
With all of the things going against us in Alabama, we weren’t expected to be ordinary – anyone can be ordinary. Be extra-ordinary. Don’t think like ordinary people because you’ll end up with ordinary results. You hear business leaders being encouraged to "think outside the box." I disagree with that advice. I say throw the box away. If you’re thinking outside the box and there are others thinking outside the box, you have a new box of people thinking outside the box. No, throw the box away!
People in my neighborhood didn’t whine about racism – they knew it was a fact of life. They told us to dream big dreams and prepare to take our rightful place in the world. Mr. McDonald Hughes, my high school principal, would always say: "You must be prepared when integration comes" – as if it were about to walk around the corner.
Dr. Robert Owens, my president at Knoxville College told us to rely on what he called the 3 Ps – plan, prepare and produce.
You must prepare for your future. One of my favorite quotes, from the French mathematician Blaise [pronounced Blez] Pascal is:
"You are today where the thoughts of yesterday have brought you and you will be tomorrow where the thoughts of today take you."
As we say in Alabama, let me "repeat that again."
"You are today where the thoughts of yesterday have brought you and you will be tomorrow where the thoughts of today take you."
My thoughts of yesterday were about becoming a journalist. My first job was as a reporter for Sports Illustrated magazine in New York. Think about it: I could get a job with Sports Illustrated, the largest sports magazine in the world, but couldn’t get a job with my hometown newspaper because at the time, they did not hire African-Americans.
For me, that brought to life Genesis 50, verse 20. That’s when Joseph encounters his brothers who sold him into slavery and tells them, "What you meant for evil, God intended for good."
There is no doubt in my mind that God had bigger things in store for me. And what the Tuscaloosa News meant for evil, God intended for good.
Of course, my hometown and the South in general, have changed considerably since the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, one time I went back home, they gave me a key to the city – it didn’t open anything. I told them that the next time I return home, I want a key to the bank – and the combination to the vault. So far, they haven’ taken me up on that offer.
When I think back to my childhood, it was my faith in God that helped me navigate that period of my life. I was using a GPS and by GPS, I don’t mean Global Positioning System. No, that’s the wrong GPS. When I say GPS, I mean: God’s Plan was Special.
His plan for me was indeed special. I am under no illusion that I did all of this by myself. God’s plan is always better than any man-made plan.
God’s plan for your life is interactive – he gave you a brain and the ability to think, and He expects you to use it. Don’t sit around waiting for God to use it for you. That was the whole point of giving you a brain in the first place. As Mrs. Sadie Wright, my 6th grade teacher, used to say: Use your head for more than a hat rack.
In using your head for more than a hat rack, don’t just plan to get a job when you graduate from Warren Wilson. As a journalist, I’ve had a great life. I’ve covered the White House, I’ve flown on Air Force One, I’ve covered presidential campaigns and both Democratic and Republican national conventions, I’ve visited Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, I’ve been to every state except Alaska, I’ve been to London, Paris, Rome, Cuba, Egypt and other countries around the world. And the best part is that someone else paid for it.
Find something you enjoy doing and find a way to get paid for that. I have been in journalism for 38 years and I enjoy it today as much as I did when I started my career in 1970. Growing up, my family never made $5,000 a year.
We weren’t "poor," we were po’ – we couldn’t afford the other "o" and "r." We were so poor that when my mother sliced ham, it was so thin that it had only one side. No, let me stop. I was only serious, I mean, kidding. But I didn’t see myself as poor. That was a choice I made.
Life is about making choices, preferably the right choices.
John Edgar Wideman is one of the most successful writers of our generation. He has won virtually every literary prize on the planet. Yet, his younger brother is in prison, serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for murder. His brother was a junkie and a thief. In fact, he didn’t even pull the trigger – his partner did. And that’s another lesson about with whom you hang.
The two brothers had the same parents, grew up in a same Homewood section of Pittsburgh, yet they took different paths in life. One is an accomplished writer, the other one in jail for the rest of his life.
I made a choice about how I would deal with my father leaving our family when I was young. I joked about it earlier, but it hasn’t always been funny. It bothered me that my father wasn’t home. He was what you call an alcoholic. I call him a drunk. Alcoholics must go to meetings – my father didn’t go to meetings.
My father died 20 years ago at the age of 52 and it has only been in recent years, after he was dead, that I made peace with him. I did that by finally concluding that as a drunk, as a person with a limited education and few job opportunities, he probably did the best he knew how at the time. That’s how I finally attained closure on this issue. I had to concede that he had his own set of problems and under the circumstances, he probably handled it as well as he knew how.
It’s easy to get depressed when your father isn’t home. This is a major problem for black males in particular. But this, too, must be put in context. Frederick Douglass’ daddy wasn’t home and we see what he accomplished. W.E. DuBois, my hero, grew up in Great Barrington, Mass. without his father. Jackie Robinson, the man who broke the color barrier in baseball, never met his daddy. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the journalist and anti-lynching crusader, did not have her daddy at home. Al Sharpton’s daddy wasn’t home. Barack Obama’s dad left when he was 2 years old. Jesse Jackson’s daddy was married, lived next door and impregnated his teen-age mother. So, if your daddy is not home, welcome to the club.
I’ve told you about the great life I’ve enjoyed as a reporter. But I want to share with you some valleys as well. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his book, Strength to Love:
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
There was one period, when I was a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, that I didn’t get alone with a certain editor. For some reason, we didn’t see eye-to-eye. She clearly preferred dealing with subservient men and that description has never fit me, as you have probably already concluded.
Her idea of making my life miserable was to place me on a night shift, even though I had considerable experience there at the time. Instead of becoming depressed by her decision, I decided that I would write my first book during that time. I would work on my book during the day and by the time I reported for work, I was in a good mood because I had already gone to work for me. I was not kept on night shift for long, but it wasn’t long before my book on Jake Gaither, a legendary football coach at Florida A&M University, was published. I completed my first book before I turned 30.
There’s one more story I want to share in connection with the book. When I first approached editors, I got turned down by 25 of them – 25 publishers. When I decided to send the proposal out again, it was accepted by several, including one of the publishers that had rejected me. So I have two framed letters at home, one saying we don’t want your book and the other one saying, here’s your check.
If you really believe in something, don’t let anyone discourage you. I remember reading about someone who had applied for a job and was rejected. She sent a letter to the company rejecting their rejection letter. I don’t know what happened in the end, but I am sure it got someone’s attention.
Whether it’s not getting discouraged in school or on a job or rejecting a rejection letter, you must decide what kind of life you’re going to live.
In other words, you must decide whether you’re going to be a thermostat or a thermometer. A thermometer merely measures the temperature. A thermostat sets it. What are you going to be? Are you going to be a leader or a follower? Are you going to complain about life’s problems or are you going to help solve them? The choice is yours. After all, you can define who are.
Finally, I want to return to the story I began with. I mentioned my mother having to ride in the back seat of the car when she returned from her domestic work. She worked for the Moodys, the family that owned the only bank in town. I was on C-SPAN a few years ago and this woman with an Alabama twang came on the line. Eventually, I found out that this woman was one of the children my mother had cared for. She’s now living in Arizona.
Think about that. Here I am, a product of the housing project, my mother was her family’s domestic worker. If anyone was expected to be on TV it would have been her. But no, God is good. I was the one on international TV and she was the one calling in to me. It just goes to show that it doesn’t matter where you start out – only where you end up.
And I expect you to end up on top of the world.
Thank you.