My Personal Black History in the Land of the Free. Part II

I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky. I lived in the same house from just after my birth until I left home at age 18 to enter the seminary to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood. The house was in a predominantly black, middle class neighborhood. I believe it was one of the first predominantly black middle class neighborhoods in the city. It was built in the 1950's when blacks, as a group, in Lexington, first really dared I believe, to indulge the thought that they could achieve something approaching equality with whites.

When I grew up the neighborhood was a very nice one. Kids from other, nearby, less middle class neighborhoods would tease those of us who lived in "The Village" (the nickname for our neighborhood which was formally named Saint Martin's Village, named after the Roman Catholic Saint--Saint Martin dePorres--a citizen of Lima, Peru who was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a black former slave.) I lived on the main street of the subdivision; dePorres Avenue. The kids who teased us called us "the rich kids." (O Lord if that only had ever even had a whiff of truth to it I would have been ever so grateful.) Today, it is one of those neighborhoods where pizza and Chinese delivery places refuse to deliver to for fear, I am imagining, that the delivery person might be robbed. My mother still lives in the neighborhood albeit in a different house and on a different street from the ones I grew up in and on.

When I was in high school, two separate events occurred separated by perhaps a year-- though I believe it was less-- that directly involved four black men from the neighborhood--two sets of fathers and sons. Both events had a lasting impact on me. It was years however, before I realized just how tremendous that impact would be.

In the first event a young man who lived in the neighborhood who was a year ahead of me in school got into a violent confrontation with his biological father one evening. Somehow a gun was pulled and the son was shot. He died at the scene. Even today I can remember the shock people at our high school and in the neighborhood were in. It was very surreal. In those days, our neighborhood was exceedingly quiet and safe. Donnie had also been a varsity football player. The father never served any time in jail. The death was ultimately ruled an accidental homicide. My family knew Donnie's father quite well. Over the years my family would report back to me on how this man was doing after the death of his son. Their reports were that he was never ever the same person after this event; that he was less than a shadow of the man he once was. In essence, two black men had died that night.

The second event involved another young man from the neighborhood who was also a year ahead of me in school, except I knew Kevin much better than I had known Donnie. Kevin had been a friend when we were growing up--until it became uncool for him to be hanging out with someone who was a high school freshmen to his sophomore reality. And again, his family and my family were close. In this event Kevin had been driving home one night and had been stopped by a white police officer for some reason that was either never made entirely clear at the time or that has escaped my memory after all these years. What ensued however is something I clearly remember. There was some sort of strange confrontation between Kevin and the police officer that had resulted in Kevin receiving multiple bruises and a few minor injuries. The police officer sustained no bruises and no injuries. Kevin had been "roughed up" by the police officer for apparently no reason. Reports in the community very quickly had it that this had been a case of Kevin simply "driving while black" way before that phrase became part of the cultural landscape here in America. It is my first memory of being aware of a potential hate crime perpetrated on a contemporary and peer of mine. It would not be the last. This story also had a particular twist that was so over-the-top at the time it would have normally only been thinkable in our community, as a plot twist in a daytime soap opera of the day. But here it was in full unadulterated truth right before the entire city, our neighborhood and our multi-ethnic high school to look at. That twist--Kevin's father, at the time of this incident, was serving as Lexington's first black police commissioner. I can't make this kind of shit up even if I wanted to. I don't have that much skill as a non-fiction writer. Some heads did roll in the Lexington Police Department after this incident. But like Donnie's father a short time before him, Kevin's father was also forever changed after this event involving his son.

Breathe In, Breathe Out.

After these two events shattered a certain innocence that had existed in my life until they occurred, I went about my little life as if two thunderously momentous events had not seriously altered the course of that life--like that 19th century series of New Madrid earthquakes and tremors had altered the flow of The Mississippi River. I had read in books and had talks with my grandfather about the historically and highly treacherous plight of the black man in America. I had even been called a nigger to my own face a time or two by that time. But reading about two 8.0 magnitude earthquakes and living through them are...well...two very different things.

Photo Credit: This is me (Coyote, which is my biker name to this day) on my 2000 Harley Road Glide when I was the President of an Oakland, California based Motorcycle Club (MC). Circa 2005

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