As an educator, by then I was enlisted in the male academy movement. The three principal players, Dr. Cliff Watson, Ray Johnson and Harvey Hambrick, opened three male academies, Malcolm X, Paul Robeson and Marcus Garvey, respectively, the latter of which I taught at for three and a half years. The schools were part of the Detroit Public School system. They didn’t t remain all-male, however, because the National Organization of Women would soon win a suit filed in 1991 demanding that they admit female students. In my first class, however, I had just four girls in a group of thirty-two students. The development programs for boys remained strong, and I got a chance to positively influence many lives in that movement.
Harvey Hambrick was the principal at Marcus Garvey, and he was an excellent administrator! He didn’t take crap from anyone. He was a hard-charging, proud educator who was born and raised in Mississippi and encouraged his staff to use unconventional teaching methods. His goal was to prepare our children, and that we did! I learned a lot from him.
I loved the work. To this day, it’s still the best job I’ve ever had. I taught middle school, and it came very naturally to me. I know it’s a cliché for educators to say they can see their direct influence on students on a daily basis, but I did see it over a two-year period. I worked with the same class, helping young boys bring their reading skills to the appropriate grade level. It was extremely gratifying to send fourteen-year-old young men to Cass Tech and Renaissance High School, both college preparatory schools considered to be the best in the Detroit Public School system. Marcus Garvey was an “at risk” school located in one of the most impoverished areas of Detroit. But together, the staff and students succeeded against amazing odds.
The job challenged me in new ways and altered my perception. For example, I stopped smoking weed because of my students. One day, a student came into my classroom high. He smelled like he’d smoked a joint for breakfast. His eyes were glazed. He wasn’t ready for school, but I felt he was ready to be corrected by a strong male figure.
“Hey, man, you been smoking weed?” I said. “You can’t come to class like that.”
“Aw, Mr. Kil,” he said. “I know you smoke, don’t you? You too cool not to smoke.”
“Man, naw!” I said. But I was lying. I wanted to set the right example, because it broke my heart to see where his priorities lay. I felt like a hypocrite. There was no way I could be an advocate for this boy’s sobriety when I’d just gotten high a few days before. I quit at that very moment. I quit drinking also. That was music to Carlita’s ears. She believed that crack, heroin and weed were all the same. Damn goodie two shoes! I love her so much!
I started a basketball team and a Boy Scout troop at Marcus Garvey, and I took kids to camp, although I’d never been myself. That experience, in fact, became one of the funniest and most fulfilling in my life. At the start of my second year as a teacher, I had the typical conversation with students about how they spent their summer, but when I asked if anyone went to camp, they gave terse responses.
“What? Camp?” they said.
I was a little surprised. “You don’t go to camp?”
“You mean, go out in the woods?” they shot back. “Man, ain’t nobody goin’ to no camp.”
I didn’t like what I heard. They seemed too disconnected from traditional, edifying childhood experiences. So I got bold. “Y’all know what? If you do well this year, then next summer, I’m taking you all to camp.” Mind you, this was the first day of school. By May, I’d forgotten I had put it out there, but they remembered. One of the kids approached me that Spring.
“Mr. Kil,” he said, “Now, you said that you were gonna take us to camp this summer. We’ve been good, so you gotta take us.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll take you!” I quickly responded. I hadn’t done the first bit of research into camp sites. Moreover, I’d never been myself! “I didn’t forget. I was just checking on you.”
I had to do something, so I spent the entire week calling camps, only to find that they were all full. I tried the YMCA and 4-C with no luck. Then I realized the Boy Scouts had space in their D-Bar-A Camp, located about forty miles outside of Detroit. It was just past the Palace of Auburn Hills, where the Detroit Pistons play, but it was reserved for Boy Scout troops. I quickly called them, and a gentleman named Darryl Jones came over and helped us form an official troop. All I had to do next was make it to the campground.
Detroit Public School rules required a set number of chaperones, based on the number of students. But summer break was about to begin, and I couldn’t find any chaperones to volunteer their time. I couldn’t get one teacher to commit. I turned to my own circle of friends. Ibn Pitts, Carlita and Darryl committed. Darryl’s girlfriend, Senita, also joined us.
chapter 5
Planting Seeds
TRY TO visualize a group of novice campers in the woods, preparing to fraternize with experienced Boy Scouts. We were an all-black troop, and every other group was white, and uniformed. That may not mean much in some parts of America, but Michigan is, to this day, one of the most racially polarized states in the Union. The other scouts knew drills, had formations and looked really organized. We wore T-shirts, cut-off shorts, sweat pants, jeans, whatever. No two people in our group were dressed alike. Even the adults in the other Scout Troops wore uniforms. And there were no other women present besides Carlita and Senita.
The first day was the worst. Isn’t it always? It took us six hours just to pitch our tents. We fumbled with the equipment, managing to finish by dinner. A bell rang to signal all meal times. As the other troops grouped together in orderly lines, our kids made a mad dash to the front. Obviously, there was a protocol we knew nothing about. We looked bad. I mean, we looked bad.
We hardly looked any better the next morning. When the military revelry played to awaken everyone, we lined up late. We just had no procedure for anything. Adding insult to injury, we were unfamiliar with activities like archery and the three-legged race. People don’t shoot arrows in the ‘hood! So, the Boy Scout competitions that pit archers, swimmers and runners from different teams against each other started out embarrassingly for us.
Started embarrassingly. Once their timidity ebbed, my troop gained their footing. It’s not like anyone offered to help us and, since the other troops were content to shake their heads and watch us flounder, we resolved to use what we knew to get what we wanted.
The week went from aimless to amazing after a few adjustments. We found loopholes in some of the competition’s rules that allowed us to position the kids in our group who had talent in certain areas. One boy among us had a father who’d take him out to practice skeet shooting. The other kids in our group didn’t know how, so we entered this youngster in the shooting competition. The camp asked each team to elect three shooters, but we changed that plan.
“He’s going to shoot all of our shots,” we said. They complained that we were breaking the camp rules but, of course, I started arguing the point.
“Where does it say that you have to have three shooters?” I asked. The rule wasn’t written anywhere. “Where’s that rule, since you’re bringing up rules?” They were livid, but our boy represented us as our lone shooter and wiped out the competition. Needless to say, they didn’t like us. To them, we may as well have been homeboy scouts.
The growing disdain boiled over toward the end of the week. Despite our newfound success in the skill events, we were still alienated. And we still managed to be late for meals. In fact, we’d eaten last at every chow up to that point. We weren’t stampeding to the lines any more, but our punctuality needed work. Meanwhile, there was a rule that the first person from each troop to get in line could save a spot for the entire squad.
Well, we didn’t have a punctual troop, but we did have Ralph, our “fast guy.” We told Ralph, “When you hear that bell, run over there and get in line.”
On the second-to-last day of camp, the revelry played and Ralph took off, arms pumping, high-stepping. He made it to the front of the lin
e. The troop was right behind him, and I was walking. By the time I got close, a few of my boys came running back to me.
“Mr. Kil! Mr. Kil! You gotta come quick! Some white man pushed Ralph down!”
I’m thinking, “Awww… here we go.” When I got to the meal tent, sure enough, Ralph was crying and angry.
“He pushed me! He pushed me!” Ralph screamed. I tried to calm him down, and then this guy approached me. He was my height, my build.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Did you push this little kid?”
This joker got in my face and said, “You’re goddamn right I pushed him! And I’ll push him again if he gets disrespectful.”
“Well, waitaminutewaitaminutewaitaminute,” I said, keeping my composure, but feeling a volcanic anger inside. “What if I push you?”
The guy leaned into me. “Is that a threat?” He put his hand up toward me. That was all I needed to see. I clocked Mr. Pusher, busting him right in the mouth. He fell to the ground as everyone looked on. He writhed like a snake. The police came, of all things, and at this point, Mr. Pusher was crying, literally choking back tears and hyperventilating. “He-he-he…”
No one could believe it. Even the officer got sick of him. “Man, pull yourself together! What’s wrong with you?” They ended up kicking both of us out of the camp. Carlita and the rest of my team stayed until the next day and helped get the boys home.
It was an experience for the ages. Corey Gilchrist, one of the scouts who would later work for my administration, tells the story in dramatic fashion. Those guys who’ve never camped join the Boy Scouts, led by a guy who’d never camped himself, and went from spectacle to spectacular. We were rudimentary from start to finish, but I was so proud of the way they figured things out as a team. By week’s end, we outran, out-raced and out-swam the entire camp. We won medals in everything.
I think Mr. Pusher symbolized societal arrogance and condescension. But it goes to show that a rose, by any other name, is still a rose. That’s one thing that children always show me—that God gives us everything we need to thrive at birth. And those kids did.
Those kinds of experiences made teaching rich for me because, at every turn, groups of boys seemed to gel, and then excel. The basketball team had a 0-11 record in their first year. The same group went 10-1 in the second year. That year included a win over Hamilton, the best middle school team in the area. The victory included a comeback from sixteen points down. It was an incredible experience.
Let me digress a moment. I didn’t explain the detailed chronology of events in my life at this time, and I think it’s warranted. Teaching for a couple of years helped me see that service was my purpose. I fell in love with it because I loved helping people thrive. I also recognized that my life had been moving toward public service. My mother decided to run for Congress in 1996, and her seat in the Michigan House of Representatives was open. She’d had that seat for eighteen years, and she had always been an incredibly hard worker. She was dedicated to her constituency. The needs of the people she served always guided her political activity. And my values came from hers. I couldn’t see anyone else in her seat. I’d worked in that ninth district—the neighborhoods surrounding three West Side high schools—Northwestern, Central and Chadsey—since I was six years old, passing out literature, going door-to-door. My grandfather, aunts and sister all lived in that area.
I seriously considered running for her seat around the time I was accepted to the College of Law in Detroit, now the Michigan State University College of Law. I’d just been accepted, and knew that would mean teaching and going to school at night. I didn’t feel I could do it, though, because Marcus Garvey usually absorbed twelve hours of my day. I taught, tutored, drove kids home and picked them up. At one point, I leaned toward postponing my law pursuit, and that’s when Carlita told me she was pregnant. This was all in 1995, and it made my decisions easier.
“Okay, you’ve gotta make a move,” I told myself. I started law school that fall, the twins were born the following January, and I launched my first campaign for office. It was incredible. We were a group of young turks— Carlita, Derrick “Zeke” Miller and Christine Rowland (Beatty after she married) and me. Derrick and Christine were my best friends. I’d known them since high school. Zeke was a basketball and All-City baseball player, and we became friends during our sophomore year.
Christine managed the campaign while Zeke and I ran it. We crafted a campaign squadron by pulling Cass’s 1988 graduation list, sending out a mass notice to our classmates, and inviting them to a meeting about my bid for office. We served chips and punch to all four of the people who showed up—me, Carlita, Zeke and Christine. We’re gonna be running this thing by ourselves, we thought.
But off we went, walking through neighborhoods and knocking on doors. Our campaign theme was “Generation to Generation.” We talked to people about how Detroit had always been about lifting up the next generation of leaders. The torch was now passing from Mom to me. And we didn’t give up on the people who graduated with us. We got on the phones, called and asked them to join in Saturday literature drops in neighborhoods. Old folks from the Shrine and people from Cass showed up.
I had no money to fund the effort, not even enough for the literature, but we never let that stop us. Finally, we scored our first endorsement, from the Michigan Education Association in Lansing. They gave us $5,000. You’d have thought they’d given us a million, because we stretched it to its limits. It was just enough money to fund a mailing to the absentee voters, and we put together a piece that I still think is a classic work. We named it after the theme, and it bore a photo of my two grandfathers on the cover, holding my twin boys on their lap. The inside of the piece espoused the virtues of lifting up each other, and Detroit’s complementary legacy. It focused on passing leadership down to new, younger generations, and I can’t think of two men who embody the city’s legacy more than my two grandfathers., Marvel Cheeks, Jr. and James B. Kilpatrick.
They were both amazing men. James Kilpatrick was incredibly well read. He factored into every report or paper I wrote from third grade until my college graduation, because I used the example of his life for research. He served in World War II, as did Marvel Cheeks, and later traveled with his wife all over the world, retracing his time in Europe. He held season tickets to the University of Michigan football games for more than forty years. Bo Schembechler was right up there with Jesus in his house. He never had a driver’s license but knew every bus route in the city and the suburbs without a written schedule. We, and all of his friends, affectionately called him “The Maestro.”
After The Michigan Education Association made that meaningful mailing possible, the only other endorsement we scored came from the Detroit-based Fannie Lou Hamer political action committee. It was just as poignant and effective because my grandfathers were also very well known in those circles. James B. Kilpatrick worked at the post office for forty-two years. Marvel Cheeks, Jr., has lived in the same general neighborhood since the 1940s, and in the same house since 1953. So the mailout connected us to their communities, and it garnered a lot of votes. We certainly needed them because my opponent, a gentleman named Fred Durhal, who has been a member of the House since 2008, received several endorsements from police officers, firemen, and Dennis Archer, who preceded me as mayor. His support dwarfed mine. Though the MEA was not well known in Detroit, their financial support was critical to our success. And Fannie Lou requires candidates to pay them $500 for their support.
We won because of our refusal to be outworked, and our determination to win. I outlasted Fred by roughly 1,000 votes. That’s a pretty wide margin for a district race. It was a nervous, exhilarating campaign (I’m always nervous when I’m campaigning), but I never felt I would lose. At the same time, however, I was surprised that anyone thought I would win. In all my campaigns, I would revisit that resolve—if we work hard, we’ll win.
My greatest strength when campaigning is that extra gear that engages just when I need it. Som
ehow, I just don’t get tired. I don’t stop. I heard Kobe Bryant talk about something similar. He said he goes into a zone where he just can’t miss. I approach campaigns like an athletic competition. I listen to rap music on the way to a debate. I refuse to be outworked. If you beat me, it won’t be because you worked harder than I did.
I was headed for a political career that would involve five campaigns, and that gear would drive each of them. Whether it was Buzz Thomas running against me for Floor Leader in the Michigan House, Gil Hill in my first mayoral campaign, or Freman Hendrix in my second, my will to outwork my opponent was the ticket. I can always see when my competition gets tired, when I got his ass, and I would always figure out a way to let him know I knew this. There’s always a way to say, Gil, you look like ya gettin’ tired, baby. Hey, Fre, you’re startin’ to look old, baby. Lookin’ like you can’t hang. I’m about to go hit fifty or sixty doors. I’m telling let these folks what kinda campaign we’re running. You goin’?
We called this gear “campaign mode.” I wasn’t the only one who had it. Christine Beatty also had that wiring. She was right there with me, and that’s how we connected. It never hit at the beginning of a campaign. Instead, we worked ourselves into it, getting to the point where debate answers just come to you, where speeches are flawless. You get so focused that it takes a while to come out of it. Even when exhaustion set in, we kept going.
My freshman year in the Michigan State House of Representatives was an incredible experience. I started on January 5, 1997. The State of Michigan had just enacted, through a statewide ballot initiative, term limits for legislators, which meant that my first term in the House would be the last time that anyone with more than six years of seniority would serve. I served with men and women who had made careers out of policy-making, and who built relationships out of trust, mutual interest and policy, rather than partisanship. I learned a lot.
Surrendered: The Rise, Fall & Revolution of Kwame Kilpatrick Page 6