CHAPTER 21
Many rivers to cross
And it’s only my will that keeps me alive . . .
—JIMMY CLIFF, “MANY RIVERS TO CROSS ”
In April 1985, a beautifully glossed cream envelope arrived in the mail with my name on it and “Boston College” printed on the front. With trembling hands I tore it open, scanning past the address until I saw one word: “Congratulations!” Without reading any further, I tossed the letter up into the air, burst out the back door, and ran through the field behind John’s house, the tall grass whipping at my legs, yelling from the top of my lungs. When I finally calmed down enough to read the entire letter, I was in for even better news: I had been awarded a full scholarship as well.
On the first day of college, in late August 1985, I tossed a small, beat-up, yellow suitcase, courtesy of another “hunting” expedition, into the trunk of John’s new two-seater MG. As we drove the hour up to Boston, Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” blaring out of the car’s speakers, it felt as if there was nothing I couldn’t do. I had beaten the Robinsons and, despite Betty’s predictions, had finally made it to college. Yet within the first few weeks, it became clear that the next four years would not be smooth sailing. I had trouble clicking with my classmates, not least because the students on my dorm floor seemed intent on getting drunk nearly every night. Social relationships with both men and women often seemed to flow from alcohol; the only way to be accepted was to drink until you keeled over. I had never liked to drink, at least not to excess, and I was never willing to join in the binges.
It also wasn’t long before my fellow students remarked on my last name, my appearance, and my race. The white students couldn’t figure out if I was black or white or something in between. “What are you, exactly?” they asked. The question stung all the more because I didn’t know either. On more than one occasion, the topic of affirmative action came up, and a white student grumbled that I had taken his high school friend’s place in the freshman class.
My relationships in the African American community weren’t much better. Skin complexion mattered in that community as much as alcohol in the white community, and my light skin, blue eyes, and strange last name made me a ready target for students who thought the African American experience could be reduced to a shade of color.
Things were even tougher in the classroom. I had been admitted to college on the basis of raw intellect and a curiosity developed during my years of furtive reading at the Robinsons’. Yet my academic foundation was, in a word, shaky. The language of college was entirely new to me; I didn’t know what a GPA stood for, what a syllabus was, how to choose classes, how to take notes, or how to prepare for a college exam. My time-management skills were terrible, as was my self-discipline. I would spend hours reviewing homework assignments because I had no sense of what was important and what wasn’t. John had advised that I not miss a class no matter the circumstance, and I listened to him. Still, I would sit as far in the back as possible in the hope of avoiding being called on, averting my glance if the professor deigned to look in my direction. Though I could follow the discussion, I was far less certain of my ability to contribute. Nevertheless, I was confident I had kept my secret well concealed.
Embarrassment was inevitable. Once, when I received a disappointing grade on a political science paper, I went to my professor’s office seeking redress. We had been reading The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, and the language was completely foreign to me, a far cry from the books Mrs. Levin had given me. But I was convinced that I had rightly captured the political view of one of Athens’s politicians, who had made the case for war with Sparta. I couldn’t understand how the instructor, Professor Landry, had thought otherwise.
Waiting outside Professor Landry’s office, I overheard him speaking with another student; I couldn’t even begin to follow what they were saying. This won’t be pretty, I thought to myself. And indeed it wasn’t.
Professor Landry was a graying, bespectacled man; his office was awash in all types of books. He leaned back in his chair, resting his chin on a makeshift podium created by his hands. “Professor Landry,” I began, licking my lips a bit nervously, “I think you made a mistake.”
His eyebrows arched above the rim of his glasses. “I see. How is that?” he said, taking my paper and scanning it over.
I held my book close to my chest as if it were a protective shield and launched into my opening testimony. As I spoke, I could see him scanning my paper more closely. Before I could finish, he held up a hand to stop me.
“Are you sure you read the text assigned to you in the syllabus?”
“I did.” I now held my small green copy of The Peloponnesian War out before him like a sacrificial offering, showing how heavily I had highlighted it.
He took the book and flipped through it. “The problem, Steve, is that you have to read the whole section, not just part of it. If you had read the whole thing, you would have realized that the politician’s position changed later on.” He took the book and flipped through it. “I can tell you didn’t read the whole section, because it’s not highlighted.” He cracked a smile. “Next time, don’t you think it would be easier to dip the whole book in highlighter?”
My face fell; he was right. And I was devastated. I may not have had a home or parents or some of the advantages of my classmates, but I had thought that I was intelligent. I had often been told so, and I had latched on to that belief as one of the few things I could truly feel proud of. Suddenly I felt horribly exposed—a feeling that would last for months.
Beyond these newfound doubts, I was also struggling with loneliness— the sense of having no “home” to return to. When holiday break came and my classmates traveled to their warm homes and family gatherings, I was forced to apply for an extension to stay in the dorms. Some classmates asked if I wanted to spend the holidays with their families, but I politely refused, unable to shake the feeling that I would be intruding. That same feeling of imposing would overcome me when I thought of visiting the Sykes family. The holidays were times for family, I reasoned, not for wayward souls.
Most days during break, I got on the trolley, or the “T” as it is called, at the foot of the campus and rode into downtown Boston. The trolley car was slow and far too often would come to a screeching halt to pick up passengers. From my window seat I enjoyed all the beautiful sparkling lights, red ribbons, and wreaths of holly decorating the homes along Commonwealth Avenue. I got off at Boston Common, which was always beautifully lit, or at Downtown Crossing, where I delighted in the smell of roasted peanuts and the ringing of bells. At some moments as I strolled around the historic city, passing colonial-era churches and magnificent monuments, I felt connected to a larger community and to a greater spirit. Ultimately, though, I knew I would have to get back on the train to return to my dorm room, where empty hallways and cold Italian submarine sandwiches awaited.
As the start of second semester approached, the disappointments were adding up. I had naively thought that college would erase the past and allow me a fresh start. Instead, I found myself facing new setbacks. And, in the midst of those discontents, I still longed for my parents, despite my greatest efforts to pretend that they were no longer necessary. But I was determined to stick it out. I had come too far, and I was not going to quit now.
CHAPTER 22
Aturning point came the summer after my freshman year when I took a job with the custodial staff. I needed the money, but I was more motivated by the free housing, which eliminated the persistent problem of where I was going to live. As it turned out, I was given something far more valuable: mentors.
The university’s custodial crew was a collection of salt-of-the-earth men whose own dreams of attending college had fallen short. There was Sumner, diminutive and irascible, with a penchant for short-sleeved plaid shirts, whose sole purpose for working as a custodian appeared to be hunting for items that departing students had abandoned; Jimmy, an older African American man, considered the cre
w’s unofficial leader; Tony Cherin, a thick-accented Italian immigrant who doubled as my supervisor, also a self-defined ladies’ man who took special delight in blasting nagging pigeons with a water hose and sharing his amorous conquests; and Dave, the spitting image of a young, red-bearded Santa Claus, who spent his days driving around in a maroon van, trying to catch his crew lying down on the job (he rarely succeeded; I often started my 6:00 a.m. shift by taking a nap among the mops and brooms in the library supply closet).
I enjoyed the lighthearted banter of these men (“What’d you hustle today, Sumner?”) and their obvious affection for one another. I also came to respect their work ethic embodied in their weathered and calloused hands. They were perfectionists who took tremendous pride in their jobs, no matter how menial others thought those jobs were. They saw themselves as protectors of the university’s image and believed that a squeaky clean campus said as much about the school as the number of volumes in the university library. In their perspicuity, Sumner, Jimmy, Tony, and Dave also reminded me of the construction crew I’d met as a boy. None had a college degree, but they had another kind of wisdom, much of which they aimed directly at me.
One blazingly hot day, while we were eating lunch in the shade next to the library, Dave asked about my first year in college. A campus tour of students and families walked by, and I watched as a college student walking backward recited the university’s great history. I debated for a moment whether I should say anything at all to Dave, but I decided to speak because we had developed a great camaraderie by then. “Well, to be honest, this past year wasn’t that great,” I said, looking off into the distance.
They listened as I related some of the issues I had faced.
“What do ya folks say about that?” Dave asked.
“Uh, they’re not really around.”
“So, that’s why you’re here working with us,” Jimmy said playfully, a mystery-solved expression dancing across his creased face. “And here I thought it was because of our charming personalities.”
To my relief, more banter followed, mainly about Sumner’s sunny disposition. Sumner said nothing to this but sat there glaring back at us, munching on his sandwich, muttering under his breath. A large piece of bologna fell from his sandwich onto the ground, and he grew furious, throwing the rest of the sandwich down on the ground in anger and storming off. This only spurred us on to new howls of laughter. When we finally calmed down, Dave returned to our conversation.
“But you’re going to stick it out, right?” he asked.
“I’m still thinking about it,” I said, half-jokingly. Had I been paying better attention, I would have realized that no one was laughing. “How about I just come work with you guys in the fall?”
Jimmy made a big show of crumpling his brown paper bag. “What ya wanna come work with us fah?” He was serious. I looked around at the other guys in the crew, and none of them were smiling either. Jimmy’s voice softened, but only a bit. “Stevie, ya got it all. You’re a young kid; ya got your whole life in front you. You’re smart, handsome; ya go to one of the best schools in the country. I mean, just look at this place.” He gestured with pride at the beautiful tree-lined campus and its Gothic buildings. “Any of us would change places with ya in a minute.”
That comment barely registered before Jimmy continued: “Don’t let me come here in Septembah and find ya workin’ with us.” He narrowed his eyes and pointed his half-eaten sandwich right at me. “ ’Cause if we do, we’re all gonna stand in line and give ya a good kick in the pants!”
Tony stood up, sunlight bouncing off his rimmed spectacles, and pantomimed a soccer kick. “Jep, kicka you right in de pants.” The rest of the guys laughed. I rubbed my newly toughened hands together and smiled but didn’t say a word. I didn’t need to. I had gotten the message loud and clear.
CHAPTER 23
Idid return the following fall, and things improved. In the classroom, I came to identify with the unofficial Jesuit philosophy of service, questioning all things and refusing to accept the world as it is. I now looked forward to going to class, where with some confidence I debated with my classmates the differing views of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Professor Robert Faulkner’s class on modern political philosophy greatly affected me. Initially I struggled to understand Francis Bacon and his method of scientific inquiry, but my own persistence and Professor Faulkner’s patient efforts helped me grasp the concepts. The value of looking at the world objectively, of gathering all information before jumping to conclusions, soon became evident. From then on I applied the principle constantly in my academic and social life.
At the same time I was wrestling with Francis Bacon, I was also uncovering the deep history and long struggle of the African American experience. My own struggles for identity had never been about race; I had always seen myself unequivocally and proudly as an African American. Still, I lacked any real understanding of my people’s history. That changed when I saw Eyes on the Prize, the documentary of the African American civil rights movement. The enormous sacrifices required in the pursuit of freedom struck a chord, for I well understood the lengths one would go to for the right to choose his or her own destiny.
What I had not understood was how prominent New Bedford had been in the historical quest for access and opportunity. The city was an important stop on the Underground Railroad; it was the first place the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass had lived when he escaped to the North. Several members of the 54th and 55th Civil War regiments, two of the first official African American infantry units, hailed from this area. The most famous was William Carney, the first African American to receive a Congressional Medal of Honor. Several decades later, New Bedford had remained in the forefront of the struggle.
Like many of my peers, I felt a connection with esteemed historian and sociologist W. E. B. DuBois, the first African American to receive a doctorate from Harvard. DuBois’s emphasis on education and leveraging that knowledge to exact social change echoed the sentiment of many African American men on campus. So deep was our admiration for DuBois that we founded an organization called the Talented Tenth, based on DuBois’s concept that those of us who achieved a certain level of success had a further responsibility to become leaders.
Some of this history had been much closer to me than I had known. New Bedford had deep roots in abolitionism and the Civil War. At the turn of the twentieth century, its whaling reputation rapidly coming to a close with the advent of kerosene, New Bedford kept its ties to equality, rivaling Boston and New York in reputation as meeting grounds for those anxious to address the inequalities suffered by African Americans. In the western end of the city, at the home of prominent attorney E. B. Jourdain, the nation’s most renowned African American leaders would gather to debate how to best address the blight of segregation.
W. E. B. DuBois was a frequent visitor to New Bedford; his grandfather, Alexander DuBois, had moved to the city in 1873. For years DuBois would write of meeting his grandfather in New Bedford, remembering him as a man “in passionate revolt against the world.” Clearly transferred to his grandson, some of that passion for equal rights manifested itself in those heated discussions at Jourdain’s home. From those meetings would come the position papers, transcendent speeches, and organizational plans that ultimately led to the creation of the NAACP. To my utter amazement I learned that the gathering place for their meetings was 279 Arnold, right down the street from where I had grown up.
Armed with a better understanding of my own cultural history, my relationships with my peers changed. Those who had questioned my authenticity because of my fair skin and blue eyes now encountered a person ready to acquaint them with the African diaspora that rightly included people who looked like me. My peers came around, to my great happiness and relief.
In the fall of my junior year, I pledged the historically black fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi. Our brothers came from all the city’s top universities and carried themselves with confidence and purpose. The fraternity had a mot
to—“Achievement in Every Field of Human Endeavor”—and the older brothers made sure you lived up to it, not merely in the classroom but also in the community. There was no question about your responsibilities: you had to execute community service projects and prepare reports on what you did. Accountability was critical, and the judgment of the older brothers was harsh and unforgiving if you failed. Also, you had to conduct yourself in an upright way, mindful that you were little more than a link in a chain that dated back to the early 1900s and that you needed to behave as a God-fearing steward of that history. I tried hard to live up to that and was soon named president of the chapter. Shortly after that, I was recognized as the Undergraduate Brother of the Year in the province.
One brother with whom I became especially close was Tim Palmer, a student at Northeastern University. Whereas I was stubborn and strong-willed, Tim was easygoing and took life as it came. I would jump right into the thick of a situation; he would take time to look at an issue from all sides. His parents, Herbert and Cookie, and sisters, Angela and Mary, welcomed me into their home and showed me again the power and the beauty of a tightly knit family.
The Palmers were not my only close connection. My relationship with Alicia, my high school sweetheart, continued on into college. After freshman year, holidays found me seated at her family’s table, watching in envy as they recounted prior holidays and childhood memories. And during my summers, I returned to the Upward Bound Program to work as a tutor and counselor. Part of what always drew me back was the sense of home and family I found in the program and the opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of young people who needed guidance and direction as much as I had. I was especially drawn to the larger-than-life figure of Mrs. Dottin, the closest thing to a mother I had known. The pamphlet the program produced to attract students contained a simple phrase: “This program has made a difference; let it make a difference for you.” And as I entered my junior and senior years at Boston College, I realized that it was true.
A Chance in the World Page 12