Read Online America Behind the Color Line by Henry Louis Gates - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Henry Louis Gates
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ability, the tenacity, the perseverance, the fortitude, and the smarts, they will put you in this job. Ken Chenault is chairman of the board at American Express, and I’m the only other black member of the AmEx board, so we’re a minority. But when you think about Parsons, Raines, Chenault, and O’Neal, white people have put them in charge of their money, and my people did it. That’s very serious! And the one thing that we know is that white people like money, and that’s why they sold us and bought us. It had to do with money. It had nothing to do with humanity; it was about money. But white people have entrusted their trust funds and the future of their children and their grandchildren to these brothers, because they are competent.
Bear Bryant didn’t play those black football players to integrate the team; he played them to win. There are so many choices today that didn’t exist when I was growing up, in sports as in education, business, community work, and politics. It’s important to individuals that they have a place to pursue their happiness. And places are now available that were not available. I’m sort of a golfer. I love it and I do a lot of it, especially with my wife. It’s being outdoors, the fresh air and the sunshine, green grass, a breeze from the lake or the ocean or wherever you’re playing, and it’s fun and it’s competitive. It’s a growing sport among black professionals, among this new leadership class of businesspeople. I played a lot of tennis for a time, after I moved to New York. I never put a tennis racket in my hand before I came to New York, and I don’t play as much tennis now, but I love it. I have partners here who take clients golfing, but I’ve never made a deal on the golf course. I fundamentally don’t take clients golfing, because golfing is my thing. And so I do it with my wife, Ann, and with my friends and my buddies.
When I grew up in Atlanta, the city golf courses were not open to blacks. The only place you could play golf was at the Lincoln Country Club, and so most of the Talented Tenth, upper-class blacks played golf there, but the better golfers were the black kids who were caddying at the white country clubs, because every Monday they got to play there. I understand that sometimes I’d like to be Michael Jordan, especially when we play golf together, at the same golf course, and when I see him playing from the gold tees and shooting in the mid- to high seventies, I’d like to be Michael. I would like to have made that last shot when they beat the Utah Jazz.
I grew up in the first public housing project for black people in this country, University Homes, so called because it stood amid the web of Atlanta’s black colleges: Morehouse, Spelman, Atlanta University, Morris Brown, and Clark. University Homes was not just for poor people; I had many adult role models there from varied social and economic levels, and my family would have been considered in the black middle class then. I can remember on a Saturday friends and I went to Ashby’s Theater, and after your hot dog, your toasted-bun hot dog at Amer’s drugstore at the corner of Ashby on Hunter Street, you walked home. I can remember walking home and seeing Dr. Benjamin Mays walking through the Morehouse campus. As a kid, I knew he was a giant, that he was important. He achieved an international reputation for Morehouse College, and he mentored Martin Luther King, Jr. He also persevered till he won a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Morehouse. Dr. Mays always walked erect, and so I’m walking twenty yards behind him, emulating Dr. Mays. Well, that’s not all bad.
I loved going to the campus because I wanted to see Dr. Rufus Clement and Dr. James Rawley, President William A. Fountain, and I would see these professors. Rufus Clement always wore a vest, and I remember him in spats, and he always wore his frat Beta Kappa key on his vest. I have never forgotten those images, and when I would go through the
Bear Bryant didn’t play those black football players to integrate the team; he played them to win. There are so many choices today that didn’t exist when I was growing up, in sports as in education, business, community work, and politics. It’s important to individuals that they have a place to pursue their happiness. And places are now available that were not available. I’m sort of a golfer. I love it and I do a lot of it, especially with my wife. It’s being outdoors, the fresh air and the sunshine, green grass, a breeze from the lake or the ocean or wherever you’re playing, and it’s fun and it’s competitive. It’s a growing sport among black professionals, among this new leadership class of businesspeople. I played a lot of tennis for a time, after I moved to New York. I never put a tennis racket in my hand before I came to New York, and I don’t play as much tennis now, but I love it. I have partners here who take clients golfing, but I’ve never made a deal on the golf course. I fundamentally don’t take clients golfing, because golfing is my thing. And so I do it with my wife, Ann, and with my friends and my buddies.
When I grew up in Atlanta, the city golf courses were not open to blacks. The only place you could play golf was at the Lincoln Country Club, and so most of the Talented Tenth, upper-class blacks played golf there, but the better golfers were the black kids who were caddying at the white country clubs, because every Monday they got to play there. I understand that sometimes I’d like to be Michael Jordan, especially when we play golf together, at the same golf course, and when I see him playing from the gold tees and shooting in the mid- to high seventies, I’d like to be Michael. I would like to have made that last shot when they beat the Utah Jazz.
I grew up in the first public housing project for black people in this country, University Homes, so called because it stood amid the web of Atlanta’s black colleges: Morehouse, Spelman, Atlanta University, Morris Brown, and Clark. University Homes was not just for poor people; I had many adult role models there from varied social and economic levels, and my family would have been considered in the black middle class then. I can remember on a Saturday friends and I went to Ashby’s Theater, and after your hot dog, your toasted-bun hot dog at Amer’s drugstore at the corner of Ashby on Hunter Street, you walked home. I can remember walking home and seeing Dr. Benjamin Mays walking through the Morehouse campus. As a kid, I knew he was a giant, that he was important. He achieved an international reputation for Morehouse College, and he mentored Martin Luther King, Jr. He also persevered till he won a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Morehouse. Dr. Mays always walked erect, and so I’m walking twenty yards behind him, emulating Dr. Mays. Well, that’s not all bad.
I loved going to the campus because I wanted to see Dr. Rufus Clement and Dr. James Rawley, President William A. Fountain, and I would see these professors. Rufus Clement always wore a vest, and I remember him in spats, and he always wore his frat Beta Kappa key on his vest. I have never forgotten those images, and when I would go through the
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