When our country was entering its current darkness, I was in the final stages of writing Walters Way: A Coach, His Runners, and His Race. I was a White author immersed in the world of educated, successful Black people. The two realities converged into a moral reflection.
The book follows the life and work of a local hero. Researching necessitated hundreds of interviews, many with former child athletes now grown.
One interviewee is now a teacher, entrepreneur, mother and coach. She is a high-energy, black-skinned life-juggler. Through her stories I walked the bleak landscape of South Side Chicago where, as a child, she did not know what a real peach looked like. There were no neighborhood grocery stores, so no fresh produce. From there to now, with two college degrees, her stories made her a surfer, riding waves of challenges. Ordinary White folks; a cashier, a teacher, would make clear her Black inferiority. Her own elders would set things right. Hers has been a life of hope, perseverance and a strong moral center.
I interviewed more members of the same Black community; men, women, sometimes a child in tow. I came away with that same sense of hope and perseverance. Their skin color bespoke roots in slavery. Their laughter, their indignation as they remembered, sometimes with a wry twist, brought me into a world I had not known, although it had been in plain sight.
Coach Walters was the purpose of the interviews. They tell me he taught them in childhood how to manoeuvre with self-respect in a predominantly White culture, always pursuing their personal best. In this he no-doubt represented countless mentors through four centuries of Black children in this country.
Now when a Black face crosses my path, I see generations of dauntless individuals who stood firm against adversity, who refused to be ignored, refused to succumb to the mischaracterizations the world portrayed them to be. When the world deals unfairly or calls them names, many of them are people who know how to manage the situation using an internal scaffolding made of iron.
In our current dark times, I have come to believe that America needs more than ever to learn how to survive the way Black people have survived. The current political crises are a shock, but they are small change compared to slavery and segregation. What we all need now is resilience, hope and the fortitude to call on our best selves.
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