by Barry Wolfe
I love Canteen Night and I love the Coolidge High gymnasium. It’s always well lit, and I appreciate the cream-colored wooden backboards. Other gyms are getting the new, fashionable glass backboards that often skew the light into a weird shot-distorting glare. I love the sound of the bouncing basketballs and the swishing sound of the shot that is so true that it touches nothing but net as it goes through the hoop. Despite my Negrophobia, I relish Canteen Night and the opportunity to play with gifted basketball players. What is Negrophobia you might ask? Well, it’s when white people get the heebie jeebies around black people. That’s what would happen to me. I would get around Negroes and I would immediately start feeling the heebie-jeebies. I’d get so nervous that I didn’t know what to say or do.
My Negrophobia takes a holiday on those transporting nights of teenage joy. During the games you might hear, in the next room, the sounds of Gene Vincent singing Bee-Bop-a-Lula or Mary Lee by the Rainbows playing on the portable 45-RPM record player marred only by the popping sounds of ping-pong balls.
Canteen night is always crowded with would-be ballplayers. Those who are not currently playing sit on the fold-up bleachers, which, when opened, fan out into six or seven rows. With them sit the many fewer spectators who come to see the latest talent. Your team has to win in order for you to stay on the court.
During Canteen Night there are few full-court games. Instead there are two simultaneous half-court games with 3 guys against 3 others or occasionally 4 on 4. Negroes play the half-court game differently than whites, at least in my part of the world. In white games, when a shooter misses a shot and a member of the other team rebounds the ball, he has to either dribble it back beyond the free throw line or pass the ball back to another teammate beyond that line before any member of that team can launch a shot at the basket. This is known as “taking the ball back”. Many an argument breaks out over the precise distance a player has advanced the ball back to or beyond the foul line. “You’re not BACK!” is the perennial cry of the aggrieved.
When Negroes play half-court, there’s no such thing as taking the ball back. If a shot is missed, members of both teams battle under the basket for the rebound and whoever gets the ball can shoot it right back up. To succeed under these conditions one has to either be able to out-jump his opponent or learn how to use his body, particularly his ass, to block other players out of any position to get the rebound. I’m in shock the first time I play in a no take-back game; because at 5’ 4” and 130 lbs I can neither jump very high nor push people around.
And my teammates cut me no slack! I would try with all my might to battle for a rebound, and my taller and stronger opponents would out-jump me or push my featherweight body out of contention for the rebound. Needless to say, it is the player I’m defending who is scoring regularly against me, particularly under the basket. Then I hear, “White, get your white ass stuck on him and play some “D”! “Grab his nuts if you have too, but don’t let him score!” Or I hear, “Come on White stop his ass! Push his ass out of there!” My ass, however, is about half the size of my opponents’. I wonder if that’s where the phrase “half-assed” comes from. In addition to being bounced around like a ragdoll, I receive many an elbow to the head during my pitiable efforts to get a rebound. It’s positively Darwinian out there.
Over time, however, I learn to use speed and trickery to obtain position under the basket before my opponent. I become skillful in tapping the ball back up into the basket rather than wasting precious seconds in coming down with the rebound and going back up with another shot. If I try the latter, it usually results in my opponent pinning the ball to my face or slapping it with such force that it ricochets off the top of my head. I also learn how to quickly and accurately judge where an errant shot is likely to land and beat my opponent to that spot.
I eagerly apply all of the skills I have learned during Canteen Night to my basketball games as a member of the Paul Jr. High varsity. Our first game is against Banneker Jr. High School. Banneker is the first Black junior high school I have ever entered in my life. The gymnasium is bigger than the one we have at Paul, and it’s filled with fans rocking to rhythmic cheers. As we are warming up, I take a moment to watch their lay-up drills. Their lay-up line keeps shifting its starting position until everyone is driving down the center of the court from the free throw line to the basket. A much fancier routine than we have. Their star player, Grant Lawson, however, is putting on a show. Instead of driving all the way to the basket, he takes off from the free throw line and literally flies the rest of the way in for a perfect lay-up. And each time he takes off, the crowd roars its approval. After one of his baskets, I overhear one girl in the crowd yelling to another, “Ooooh wee, Carlita, what did you do to that boy? You must have given him some last night”. The howling laughter that follows drowns out Carlita’s response, but it is apparently an affirmation of the claim.
Grant is as pleasant a human being as he is talented on the basketball court. He wears his talent lightly and never engages in any attempt to verbally humiliate his less talented opponents. In fact, this phenomenon of verbally mocking or humiliating your opponent during a game is called “talking trash”. It is introduced to me by Grant’s teammate, LeDroit Parks. Both LeDroit and his trash talking are a shock to my system. He’s an inch taller than I am, but he looks 20 years old. He’s in the 9th grade, but he possesses a mustache and is built like someone who spends most of his time at Muscle Beach. LeDroit is a non-stop trash-talker. This is a very handsome well-built brown man playing on a junior high school basketball team. “Come on Hammer Nose, do your stuff! How did you get such a hammer nose? You truly ugly, man. You look like you been hit wit an ugly stick.” LeDroit’s taunt about my nose made reference to the misshapen lump that developed as a result of my cleft palate and lip. Somehow he intuits that this taunt will infuriate me more than any other that he might conjure up.
On and on, he chatters. Laugh and chatter. Chatter and laugh. The entire game! The more he talks, the angrier I get until I want to punch him out. But I check the size of his biceps again and think better of the idea. After he steals the ball from me on a couple of occasions and blocks one of my shots, I learn to ignore his taunts and to stay focused on my game. Then I begin to score on him regularly and often. The taunts get nastier. “You got lucky, Hammer Nose! Maybe I’ll break that nose for you and we can make it right? What d’ya think about that?” After the game, LeDroit comes toward me and I’m terrified. I think he’s about to kick my ass in retribution for my finally besting him on the court. As he gets closer, he suddenly flashes me a huge grin. “Great game, Hammer Nose,” he says, giving me a friendly slap on the back. And then to no one in particular he says, “This white boy can PLAY!” Still grinning he adds, “My trash-talking almost fucked you up, didn’t it?” I nod uncomfortably as it finally dawns on me that there’s no malice in the trash talk. It’s just a tactic.
In the showers LeDroit engages me in an extended conversation about our origins. I ask him how he came by the name LeDroit and he tells me that he is named after the neighborhood in which he lives. LeDroit Park, situated just to the south and east of Howard University, was once home for the black social elite, including many of the University’s faculty members. By naming him after the neighborhood, LeDroit’s parents believed he was marked for greatness.
We compare notes about growing up in different parts of Northwest Washington, he in LeDroit Park and I in Brightwood. His tone throughout seems to be a strange mixture of defiance and ingratiation. I think I’m missing something in what he is saying but, in any event, my focus mainly is on whether he likes me.
Basketball provides me with my first real exposure to Negro people. This inauguration is the beginning of my education. During these games, I feel some lessening of the hold that my phobia has on me. Perhaps, this is where I first get the idea that if I spend more time with Negroes, my phobia will be cured. Although our association is limited to the confines of the basketball court, a question forms
in the back of my mind. Why should these decent guys be the subject of such hatred and fear? It’s disturbing to me to feel their friendship and yet think such awful thoughts about their supposed violent tendencies and lack of smarts, cleanliness, work ethic, and sense of responsibility.
I wonder how I acquired such shabby ideas about people that I not only admire but for whom I feel great warmth. Then the memory comes. During the Eisenhower vs Stevenson presidential campaign back in 1952, all my peers were freaking out and shrieking to the heavens that if Eisenhower were elected, he would allow “niggers’ into the Takoma Park Municipal pool. My ten-year imagination began to conjure up some dark miasma that would emanate into the pool water contaminating us with God knows what. What am I so afraid of? What do I fear will so contaminate me? Perhaps there were earlier conjurings, but I date the beginnings of my own Negrophobia to this imagined aquatic pollution. But when I’m playing basketball, I somehow forget this fearful sense of otherness and want only acceptance and validation of my growing talent. That validation comes one night when my Canteen Night teammates make me an “Honorary Nigga”. I kid you not, that’s what they called me. That’s what I would hear whenever I beat my opponent to a spot, retrieve a rebound and score. “Good going, White! You , our Honorary Nigga”.
And being an Honorary Nigga saved my ass on more than one occasion. There is one night when I’m hanging out with my best friend, Eddie, in the alley near his house, when a group of about ten Negroes about our age approaches us with menace in their eyes. They are dressed in green raincoats, pork pie hats or grey fedoras, and pointy-toed shoes. They are known as “Block Boys” and they are equal opportunity shit-kickers. A person’s color does not matter. They seem to always be looking to kick somebody’s ass, Black or white. My first response is to myself, “Holy shit, we’re gonna get our asses kicked now”. My friend and I just freeze. Their leader, who oddly is one of the smallest members of the gang, approaches me and asks, “You got a match?” As the rest of the gang moves closer to us, my friend and I frantically search ourselves for a match as if our lives depended on it. In fact, we think our lives do depend on finding a match. While we continue to fumble around our clothes, resembling nothing more than dancers doing the “mashed potato,” a young black man in his early twenties walks close by. He sees the gathering and quickly deduces what is about to happen. I recognize him to be one of the regulars at Canteen Night. More importantly, he recognizes me and begins conversing with several of the Block Boys. I strain to hear what he’s saying. And what I hear is salvation itself. “Hey that’s Little White. I know him; he’s okay. Leave ‘em alone”. Suddenly, there is room to breathe as the Block Boys disperse. Fresh spacious air fills my lungs, and I have never been so happy to be an Honorary Nigga.
My Canteen Night experiences taught me a great deal about the game of basketball. But there is one skill I develop that fires my dreams of becoming a member of my high school’s varsity basketball team-The Jump Shot! As my opponents become bigger, faster, and stronger, my two-handed set shot is rendered obsolete. Basketball burns appear regularly on my forehead from the numerous blocked set shots that land there. While I attempt the set shot, everyone else is shooting the jump shot. It’s embarrassing to watch my already taller opponent soar even higher over my head to loft a soft jumper. Even when I maintain perfect defensive position and time my jump to be perfectly congruent with my opponent’s rise, my outstretched arm is pitiably below where the ball leaves my opponent’s fingertips. Now my defensive deficiencies are even more apparent, much to the great chagrin of the members of my team. I want to be able to shoot a jump shot. Again, survival skills! If I want to survive in this game that I love so much, I’m going to have to learn how to shoot “a sweet J”.
So I study everyone’s idiosyncratic way of shooting the jumper. I study the form, the spread fingers, the way most shooters instinctively position the grooves of the ball perpendicular to their shooting hand, the flick of the wrist, the beautiful back spin that softens the shot as it approaches the rim of the basket. I practice and practice my own version of the jump shot, and I’m gratified to see that because of my quick rise into the air and my quicker release, even much taller defenders cannot block my shots.
As my accuracy improves, I become emboldened to try out for the varsity. Few of my friends hold out any hope that I can make the team. But I’m selected along with a few other 10th graders to be nominally on the varsity. Most of our playing time, however, is with the junior varsity team. My junior year is also spent mostly playing on the JV, but now I’m averaging 20 points per game mainly on the strength of my jump shot.
Music, dancing, and basketball—my holy trinity-- fills me with warmth and admiration for Negroes that perfectly balances my Negrophobia. I admire them and yet I fear them. But I fear even more what my white peers, pals, and parents will say if I get too close to Negroes; if I become too much like them. That’s part of Negrophobia too, worrying about what your white friends and family members will think; even white people you don’t know. I don’t know why. I feel so humiliated if and when they accuse me of Negrophilia, although they wouldn’t put it so nicely. Whenever I’m called a “nigger-lover,” I feel like I will soon die -- unwanted, despised, and alone. This love-fear feeling makes no sense to me.
Chapter 2.
What’s The Reason I’m Not Pleasing You?
I’m a senior in High school. Wow! Hard to fathom that I’m that old. One more year of boring classes and pompous teachers, Ugh! The school year is just beginning, and I already have senioritis. Besides the fact that I have little motivation for my classes, there is another reason why I can’t focus on my studies. Basketball! Yes, I’m still banging that teapot. Basketball. I will make the team—come hell or high water. I have grown all the way up to five feet six and a half inches. Still small, but not shrimp size anymore. Every morning now I get up at 7 am and ride my bike to the outside basketball courts at Paul Junior High School and work on my shooting, moves, and fundamentals for 45 minutes. Then I ride home, take a quick shower, and wolf down a hurried breakfast and run the two blocks to Coolidge High School. Of course I tend to doze off during Solid Geometry my first class of the day.
I can’t wait for basketball tryouts , which begin in the middle of October. While I’m asleep I dream about the pending scrimmages and how I will impress the coaches with my dribbling, shooting and –what else—my savvy. In one dream I am guarded by a 6 ft 1 inch opponent who keeps telling me I’m too short to play this game. I respond by dropping a soft “J” over his head and into the basket. I have no girlfriend, no likely candidate for a senior prom date, and am clueless about what I will do after I graduate. But all that seems insignificant compared to my all-important goal of making the team.
Well, make the team I do although it looks like I won’t see much playing time. Our coach is so excited because the two best guards in the city are living within the Coolidge geographical boundary. Grant Lawson, by the way, is one of them. The other is Bobby Spackle who played with me at Paul and was our leading scorer. Both Grant and Bobby have All-Met written all over them. Coach then learns that both of them have been recruited away to Catholic schools, Bobby to DeMatha High and Grant to John Carroll. Our coach is furious. He can’t stop talking to us underlings about those two. I think he visualizes a dismal season without these stellar players. And the previous year Coolidge only won three out of 18 games. He had hopes of turning that record around—until now. At the beginning of the season, I find myself sitting on the bench, a 2nd string guard. We travel to Baltimore to open our season against Patterson Park High. We lost! I don’t play until near the end of the game and manage to score six points. During the second game of the season against High Point, however, I find my confidence and my accuracy. The coach put me in during the second quarter, and I ended up leading the team with 17 points to our first victory. I am first string after that.
Many, if not most, of the high schools we play against feature all black or mostly blac
k teams. A few others are integrated. Wilson—our arch-rival—is the only all-white basketball team in the City Interhigh League. Our team is only slightly integrated. We have three black ballplayers on the varsity. As the season wears on, my confidence grows until I begin to believe that I can play well against some of the best Black basketball players in the city. The more I feel the equal of these talented Black players, the better I play. And the more I chastise myself for my racist feelings.
Coolidge’s basketball season is an up and down affair but, surprisingly, we end up on the brink of becoming a playoff team for the first time in years. In order to qualify for the Interhigh Playoffs, we have to play our rival, Wilson, for the third time. We split two games during the regular season and our identical records force the rubber match. The game goes into overtime. The game is decided by a tactic I had learned all those years ago at Coolidge’s Canteen Night playing those no take-back half-court games with bigger and stronger black players. Our sharpshooting forward launches a rainbow jump shot from the corner. Because he rushed it, both the 6’ 3” Wilson forward and I could tell that the shot is too strong and will careen off the far rim of the basket where we both await the rebound. The Wilson player has inside position on me; but as we both go up for the careening ball, I use my ass to nudge him underneath the basket. I catch the errant shot in midair and in the same motion twirl around and softly guide the ball into the basket. Just as the ball goes through the net the buzzer sounds the end of the overtime period and the game. I’m carried off in the arms of my teammates and even our Principal, with whom I have regularly battled about the quality of my daily school garb, comes up and with a great smile on his face congratulates me and joins the others in chanting my name, “White! White! White! White!