My life seems to have divided itself into two major periods: before Morgan and after Morgan, and then there was everything in between. Those years shaped me as much as any others. Morgan was there when no other school would touch me. I don't blame the ones who turned me down. Anybody judging me at that time would have labelled me a bad bet. But Morgan said yes, and I had the good sense to stay there. Did I ever feel out of place? You'd think I would, right? But, nope, wait, possibly once: the first time I crossed the quad when classes were changing. Suddenly, Negroes were everywhere, 360 degrees of Negroes, wall to wall Negroes, and not a one of me. In trying to retrieve the feelings I had then the one that seems most appropriate is bemusement. I remember smiling to myself and thinking, so that's what it's like. Then I went to class, and I don't recall ever feeling isolated at all. OK, maybe when I went out for the wrestling team. And surely when I took Judy Brown to the Lyric Theatre to see Dick Gregory, and we were the only white folks in the audience. One of the jokes he told was that it was easy to stop smoking cigarettes because it was easy to put down anything white. Judy and I laughed along with everyone else, something I'd never do today. Couldn't everybody tell I was a fellow of good will? Apparently not, but I didn't yet notice it. I would only come to realize it years later, what Wordsworth meant when he said poetry was emotion recollected in tranquility. The single time somebody told me point blank that I was racist she was a good friend, a coed, very bright, future prom queen, named Jackie. We took some classes together. German was one of them. Ali was still calling himself Cassius Clay when he fought Sonny Liston for the title. Liston was a brooding, murderous looking beast who had in fact served time for murder. Clay was a loudmouthed upstart. Most white fans wanted Liston to pulverize Clay. You got it. I was one of them which is what I told Jackie when she asked me who I was for? She told me the only reason I wanted Liston was because I was a racist. I, of course, ranted against this assertion. We stood in front of the language arts building and swapped arguments. For God's sake, I was a student at Morgan! What racist? We were laughing but each of us was serious. I was dumbfounded. She was dogged. Jackie wouldn't back down, and I kept peppering her with examples of my lack of racism. It was never a heated argument. We parted friends, however, for many years now I have thought a lot about what she said. It was a cold day. I remember that, too.
I don't remember when -- I think it was way after I graduated Morgan -- but I finally got it. Now, don't be smug from the vantage point of contemporary time and place. We're talking a half century's difference. I hadn't yet grasped the subtler versions of racism. I knew big things. I knew my parents sent me to school the first day that Negro students were allowed in white schools. My brother and I braved the gauntlet of screaming racists that lined both sides of the sidewalk. It was a goddamn lynch mob! It was a terrifying time, every step, one hundred yards. A gauntlet of rabid goyim (That's what we said then). Jesus Christ, don't let them figure out I'm Jewish! Still, my brother and I made the door before bottles began flying. If we'd been Black, we'd have been dead. This was not the kind of racism Jackie talked about. It was the kind that programs us to be unaware, to accept versions of the story without question, to call down judgment, the kind of thing that seeps into your brain while you sleep. Sonny Liston was a white man's Negro, a man who fit the stereotype --- surly, mumbly, shambling, and very dark. Cassius Clay was an uppity colored guy. Light skin. Big mouth. That damn fool was a whole lot of terrible things -- loud, opinionated, in your face, disrespectful, taunting -- everything any sensible man would hate, right? And so I hated him without understanding how programmed I'd been, not by my family, just by growing up in Baltimore and breathing the air. For the record, I came to regard Muhamud Ali as a bonafide American hero. He literally put his money where his mouth was. He was forced to give up the way he earned a living. He was stripped of his title. He literally risked five years in prison. Still, he stayed true to his principles in the face of extraordinary hatred. "No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger," he said. How many of us have the fortitude to walk that walk? And do we know if that strength will be there when we need it? Is that what it means to have faith?
I met the man. It was during the period of time in which he was stripped of his title. I was teaching in West Virginia when he came to the campus to speak. Even without his title Ali was already a legend. Bundini Brown, his longtime friend and bodyguard, was with him. "Hold me back! Hold me back!" the champ yelled when he saw me coming to shake his hand. Muhammad Ali lunged forward as if to grab me. Bundini held him back. Another bodyguard held onto him from the other side. "Hold me back! Hold me back!" It only took me a second to figure out he was kidding, but I tell you true: in that one second my life passed before my eyes. The era of behemoth athletes was still a long way away, but when we shook hands my hand disappeared within his. Ali was the biggest man I had ever seen. He crackled with unbridled energy, like he existed within a force field of his own making. But there was an edge to him, a sense of unpredictability and danger. My life has afforded me many opportunities to meet and work with high end personalities, and that includes a president of the United States (smack inside the White House, too), but to this day I have never met anyone -- movie star, politician, or athlete -- who could electrify a room like that man could.
There is a story about a conversation a father once had with his son. The son came to his father and asked what sport he should play. He was trying to choose between playing football or boxing. "Football," his father said, "Because boxers don't play."
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