by Jerrold Ladd
Just as I realized it had with me, the potential of most people I had known, while starving in the west Dallas housing, projects, while wandering in Oak Cliff, while decaying in Prince Hall, had been subdued by this defect in understanding. Vernon, Jamie, Shelvin … The greatest loss to all of us was not the loss of our parents, our families, and our education, not the disappointment, the hunger, and the humiliation. It was the loss of our minds, for the mind is the soul of man.
After learning the buried truth, that we were the first, the fathers of knowledge, the unhomed children of the sun, I felt that my entire life had been like that of a certain man who had wings of strength and splendor. From childhood this man had watched his brethren sweep the heavens and glide gracefully in the sunshine. But because his wings were a different color, he had been fooled into believing he could not fly. He knew his wings looked the same, were built the same, flapped the same. But he never had proof. So he never had tried. Then he discovered in a remote cave, a cave that had been kept well hidden, pictures of men of his color, flying in the clouds. And on this glorious day, in desperation, he jumped off a cliff, was swooped up in the winds of truth, flapped his damnedest, and found he could fly above them all.
17
OUT OF THE MADNESS
Full of new assurance, I eventually returned to my original performance level at the firm. While still there, I worked feverishly, coordinating several projects at a time, seeking out paralegals to get assignments, and doing clutch work for several attorneys. I was there to see the cleaning crews leave at nights.
And instead of being docile and content, I became outspoken. I would challenge the whites on the spot whenever they tried to use their inferiority tactics. I began, for example, to keep time schedules, notes, and dates, and whenever they would make up a lie about my speed or proficiency, I would whip out those charts and dates and watch them turn red.
Eventually, I was fired because “we just can’t seem to place confidence in you,” said one. “People are uncomfortable. Maybe it’s better,” said another. However, until I was released, I worked my hardest to break every stereotype they had.
On my last day there in late March 1990, I told them all it had been a pleasure working with them. I calmly walked around the office and shook the hands of several people I had come to know. I heard later that some attorneys protested my departure. But I was more than ready to get away from there, a place I felt had only limited me.
I called Alex to let him know I had been fired. He said, “Maybe you just weren’t ready.”
I asked him if he wanted to hear my side of the story. He told me, “It doesn’t matter. I’m still your friend. I believe in you.”
I wanted Alex to admit it was possible for those whites to be unfair, but this was something I don’t think he could do. I would call Alex periodically for the next few weeks, to see if he wanted to talk. I still liked him and thought we could be friends on a different level, without him trying to help me, just plain old friends. But he wouldn’t return my calls. I finally figured he had given up hope and was trying to let me off easy. So I stopped calling.
Although Alex and I needed time away from each other, we would eventually talk and grow close again, especially after my reputation as a rising writer began to build in the South. I knew he had felt that no matter how strong and motivated I was, my task was hopeless. And his presence had represented a life that I could not have. But I knew otherwise.
Knowing harder times were on the horizon, I had paid my rent up for two months. And I had a few hundred dollars of severance pay. But I ended up giving that money to a friend who was behind on his rent, all except enough to buy a desk, several textbooks, and a small file cabinet.
With my apartment as a base, I began to sort out a life plan. Even though I should have been worried, even though I knew my money would run out soon and that I would be back in the middle of the lowest levels of poverty, worry was the farthest thing from my mind. My findings had stirred something deep in me. And now only time kept me from learning.
I felt I also could invent mathematical formulas to build architecture like the Pyramids, whose formulas still baffle all of science. If my people had invented surgical instruments and were performing brain surgery when other countries were in the Dark Ages, if my people had complex forms of governments and systems of religions when other races were primitive, then I could also accomplish high tasks. If my people knew of the rings of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter, and the interpretations of the stars before there were telescopes, then these mental aptitudes were also available to me. The same core for this intelligence, this mass understanding, this interpretation of complexity, flowed in my veins. And I intended to use every drop of it or die trying.
I would begin each morning at my desk, after a small breakfast, working on strategy and goals. I knew I had no intention of doing a step-by-step struggle to the top of the success ladder, going through years of toiling with the white business community and its owners so I could say, “Gee, after twenty years, I am a successful store manager working eighty hours a week, making pennies and crumbs.” I no longer had the patience for the politics and racism at some rigid white company. So I figured I would work on projects and ideas that could catapult me over that stage, through those unnecessary setbacks, and into an area where I had some real financial independence.
This was nothing new. Many of the young men had come to the same conclusion, that enough of us had been taught to have small dreams, to say “I want to be a doctor,” rather than “I want to own a hospital,” to say “I want to be a manager,” rather than “I want to own and control a large industry,” to say “I want to be a teacher,” rather than “I want to pioneer a new university,” or write math and history books, or design new computers, and build houses, and similar dreams. But I realized we were doing in decades what it had taken other races centuries to do, and against odds a hundred times greater.
I concluded that my first objective must be to gain a base of understanding on as many subjects as I could. I realized that learning new disciplines, such as trigonometry, law, agriculture, nuclear science, was a core thing, meaning any person can shape his intelligence to master any body of knowledge he desires. So I began with writing and decided math would be next. I always had figured it’s better to master one discipine before moving on to another. So that’s the way I studied, mostly the art of writing, and occasionally studying math, business, and other areas. I figured once I had mastered writing, I would move on to math, then decide what would be next.
Over time, I began to read the textbooks I had bought. I started from the very beginning, reading grammar, essay, and rhetoric books. I knew I had to patch up the holes in my knowledge, everything I had missed in grade school. Instead of just reading, I would memorize the information, thirty and forty pages of text, word for word, and practice quoting the text verbatim. I had always heard the remark “You have to be twice as good as the white man to make it.” And now I understood. I inevitably would do the same with the math, memorizing the rules and steps, the formulas. I would do the same with vocabulary, typing, basic computer programming, and dozens of other subjects.
I no longer thought of just being a writer, scientist, or attorney, which were my first ambitions. Why not all? My confidence was that high. I knew it was possible and less difficult than I had been led to believe. Besides, so many of us had been killed, imprisoned, or warped that we needed men and women who had more than one skill, in order to rebuild our communities.
The only difference between us and others is that they had all the resources: food, books, air conditioners, parents, organized communities, banks, schools, newspapers, grocery stores, a right to a fair trial, a right to decent medical care, protection from police officers, fair opportunity, taxation with representation, and other important things. Furthermore, we were facing a wide information gap, because we once weren’t allowed even to read and learn. And when that was abolished we were given inferior schools, misinfo
rmation, and terrorized neighborhoods. And the gap between the races became wider and wider. As a result, I knew, and took pride in knowing, that the status of white America, all their gains, wasn’t something that they had earned through fair competition. They couldn’t stand proudly and say, “We earned, and worked, and toiled for this. Y’all had equal opportunity, y’all are just dumb and lazy.” Whites had never competed fairly for anything. No one truly knew the measure of their ability. Instead, they had killed off and enslaved others for the wealth and resources they possessed and had held on to at any price.
After a while, after I felt I had really started to change my direction, I finally went back to south Dallas to find my friends. I ran into Jamie first, near Lincoln High School. He was happy to see me. “Where have you been, Jelly Roll?” he asked, using the nickname he had given me. He was coming from Lincoln where he now worked as a teacher’s assistant.
He took me to a small white house on Pine Street that he was renting, which was several blocks from the school. I told Jamie I would be needing a place to stay. Without hesitation, he asked if I wanted to move in. “You know you’re welcome to live with me,” he said.
So a few days later, I paid one of the older men in south Dallas to haul my belongings to his house. Jamie gave me one of the two bedrooms, the one in the back. And to help him with the bills, I filed for unemployment.
Back in the neighborhood, I settled into my new home, my new back room, with my small desk and boxes of books, and went right back to work. I enrolled into two summer classes at the community college and started looking for a part-time job. I still stayed mostly in the house, except for occasionally going out with Jamie and his friends.
I began to work on the first rough drafts of my life story and other small writings that would be published in magazines in Texas. I later would win several prestigious writing awards and be invited to visit Ethel Kennedy in her house in McLean, Virginia, where I met Senator Ted Kennedy, who encouraged me to keep up the good work. I eventually would use my writing talents to pave the way for me to pursue my entrepreneurial ambitions.
I saw little of Vernon during this time but learned he had begun selling dope in Arlington, a suburb about twenty minutes from Dallas. He was getting into lots of fights and staying around trouble. He even tried to start fights with Jamie and me. So we figured he would have to find himself in his own time, believed he would choose the right path before it was too late, but decided, for the time being, to support him from a distance.
By the summer of my twentieth birthday, I had learned the truth about self-reliance, about not wasting my intellect, about my responsibility to my child. I had not thrown away courage, become a dope addict or a religious puppet. But I still saw my friends shooting each other, saw the girls walking the streets like zombies, saw the hardworking Dixon Circle boys losing hope.
I was keenly aware of where I stood, that there was no real racial harmony or freedom for blacks, and anyone who claimed so was a fool. I knew I had no time to waste, that there was too much that needed changing and too much work to get done.
So I committed myself to being a living testimony, to being a custodian of black proverbs and lore, to writing great race-guiding books, ones that would encourage us once again to explore, to value family, culture, and unity.
It was at this time, in the heart of a bitter neighborhood called south Dallas, in a place where the suffering of the people has no bounds, that I knew I had won the fight for my soul. With this victory, I realized that nothing, and no one, could ever stop me from living and dying as a strong black man, that I was forever out.
EPILOGUE
In the summer of 1992, while living with my sister in Oak Cliff near Paul Quinn College, I met a new friend: Keenon, a young man about twenty years old. We talked about his motorcycle’s horsepower at a black-owned detail shop on Lancaster Street, Sparkle Detail, one street over from where old man Wayne had lived.
Keenon was about my height (six feet one), had real dark skin, and permed shoulder-length hair, which was popular with black men in 1992. We both had slim builds, but I was larger from lifting weights, and he was gangly. After we talked, he burned rubber as he left the detail shop, his hair fluttering in the breeze. He leaned around a corner and out of sight. He was gone so quickly.
Over the two months I knew him, we did many things together. We rode around in my convertible Mustang. He tried to teach me to ride his fast bike—I backed out after I saw him run into a fence with that thing. We ate pizza at his grandmother’s house, where his only brother lived and his mother, stepfather, and younger sister, who had a small child, visited all the time.
Over time, I learned Keenon had qualities I admired: quiet, understanding, observant, and extra-kindhearted—a kindness some mistook for weakness. And Keenon, similar to most of the hardened brothers, was not afraid to exchange blows with any man, although that wasn’t his preference.
Keenon had one of the best personalities. He had a charming smile, which was full, pearly and deep. Being around him, you knew that there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for you—if he loved you. Keenon’s mother had lost her job, so he had taken up a lot of the slack. He told me he’d been paying many of the bills at the apartment where they lived, including, at times, the five-hundred-dollar rent. He also helped his sister and his grandmother. All of his family looked up to him.
But I never imagined Keenon sold drugs to get the money. He seemed too smart to slip into that trap. One day while we talked in front of his house, he asked for a ride to some nearby apartments.
“For what?” I asked.
“To pick up some dope,” he said, smiling a little. “I’ll just run up there and be right back down.”
But he stopped smiling when he saw how amazed I was. He started looking amazed, too, as if he couldn’t believe I was surprised over something so common, something everybody was doing for a little change. I refused to take him.
About two weeks later, Keenon rode with me near Red Bird Mall to pick up the keys to my new apartment. Going there, I told him how I felt about him taking chances selling drugs, how I felt he should put his intellect to better use. “I’m about to incorporate a small company,” I told him.
During that trip home, he must have asked a thousand questions about the goals of this company and how was I doing it. He sadly reminded me of many former close friends, and other people I had known who desired to establish legitimate means of income, to own companies, to chart their own destinies. But, just like the challenges they faced, Keenon would need strength to overcome the difficulties of his life.
Keenon would never have the chance to grow into the man he could have become, never have the chance to reflect on his glorious past or tap the greatness sleeping within him. The last time I saw him alive was when he and his stepfather helped me move my belongings into my new apartment. Days later, I came over while his stepfather stood outside the house of Keenon’s grandmother. “Hey, where’s Keenon?” I asked.
“Jerrold, Keenon’s dead,” he said. “He spent the night here, and when we came this morning, we found him, his brother, his grandmother, and his friend piled up on the floor. They were all dead, had been shot execution-style. The whole kitchen floor was soaked in blood.”
For the next two weeks, people in cars would slowly pass the house to see where the murders had occurred. It was reported as one of the most gruesome mass killings in Dallas. It kept the black neighborhoods paralyzed for a long time. The Dallas media played Keenon up like some sort of big drug lord, which upset his family.
A young man in his mid-twenties was caught and convicted nearly a year later for all four murders. He was allegedly a drug rival of Keenon’s.
Keenon’s death had so much significance. Another friend gone. Another senseless murder.
Keenon was just another black boy destroyed, proving that the factory of death was still churning, and that the black race must work hard to solve the dilemma of the mind.
Around then
, I helped my mother and her elder husband move to my two-bedroom apartment. She had lived down the street from Keenon’s grandmother and had seen him hanging in her apartment complex. Keenon had kept the young boys from disrespecting her when she entered and left her house. I encouraged her to pack her bags and move several days later.
She had been on and off drugs the last two years, and in and out of jail. I had left for Florida in December 1991 to attend Florida A&M, and had returned home in April 1992. She had gone to jail the same week I returned home. It took a lot of time, effort, and money to gain her release. While I was in Florida, she had found a man she admired and gotten married. She was now forty-two. We moved in together to the new apartment, where she finally was in a position with some real support.
She enrolled in GED classes on her own, and got more involved with her grandchildren. She talked to me about her desire to develop a program to treat addicts and people in need. She felt that she knew how to counsel and respect those kinds of individuals and wanted to do her part in contributing to improving our community. I promised her that as long as she had dreams like that I would make sure she had all the support she needed. It would fulfill another goal of mine: to design a family treatment facility around her theories.
I had heard my mother many times tell me never to let God get fed up and turn his back on you. “Once he does this, you’re no longer under his protection,” she had warned. I guess her friend Big Mary never learned this lesson. One day she fell dead in a Dallas street. Others we knew fared better. Shortleg Lee is still alive, retired, and living in south Dallas. I’ve had little contact with Vernon. Jamie got married and does his own audio and visual production work.
My sister remains married, and has added a son to her posse—my nieces, Fatima and Shakara. Her marriage is really working and she is settled and happy. She also plans to return to school. My brother has a daughter and a son by an older woman he lives with. He is enrolled in the police training course at Dallas Baptist University and plans to become a police officer. We all guess that’s okay for three high school dropouts.