Brother West (7 page)

“I wasn’t good enough to enter,” Cliff recently remembered. “In my junior year, my best time in the mile was only 4.37. But not only did Hobday insist that you and I go to the meet, Corn, he used his position as head of the sponsoring organization to introduce us to the Grand Marshal, Jesse Owens. After the meet, Jesse came to our house for dinner. Man, that was the thrill of thrills! When he asked me about my time in the mile and I told him, he said, ‘Son, I see something in you that makes me think next year you’ll be in this meet and win it. I see a champion in you.’ His words were so strong and his heart so sincere I couldn’t help but believe him. And sure enough, next year I won the national and state championship. I ran a 4.09
.”
It is still a Kennedy High School record forty-two years later.

Having Jesse at our dining room table was really something. I asked him about Germany in 1936. That’s when he won four gold medals at the Summer Olympics and, in the process, undercut Hitler’s hateful nonsense about a superior Aryan race. In the course of our conversation, though, I learned something else: It wasn’t the fact that Hitler didn’t shake his hand that bothered Jesse. It was how he had been ignored once he got back home. For all his record-breaking honors, for all the glory he brought to the United States, Jesse Owens was not acknowledged by the president or invited to the White House. Roosevelt ignored him, and so did Truman.

“I never even got a congratulatory telegram,” he said.

C
LIFF ATTAINED FAME HIS SENIOR YEAR
in high school by winning practically every meet he entered, and setting new records to boot. His victories were so spectacular that he was on the front page of the daily paper. California’s governor, Ronald Reagan, took note and invited Cliff and his family to the State Capitol for a congratulatory luncheon.

I need to put this in context.

It was 1968. Only a year earlier, the Black Panther Party, formed in nearby Oakland by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, had marched to this same State Capitol to protest a bill that would prevent a citizen from carrying a loaded weapon in public. The Panthers showed up armed, their weapons in full display. They wore black leather jackets and black berets. The police arrested Seale and some two dozen others. That was May. In October, Huey Newton was charged in conjunction with the slaying of a police officer in Oakland.

The party newspaper,
The Black Panther
, had a profound influence on me. Their articles on social and political history opened my eyes and triggered my curiosity. They dealt with issues that other publications flat-out ignored.

As Dad drove us down to meet the governor, I was thinking of another issue: Reagan had backed the 1966 bill that would have killed open housing. Open housing allowed us to make this recent move up to South Land Park. Reagan had supported all sorts of Jim Crow measures that would have, in the minds of some, kept us in our place.

But Reagan was a charmer, an ah-shucks-so-great-to-have-you-here kinda guy. We Wests possessed charms of our own. When the governor was introduced to me and he started complimenting Cliff, I said, “Yes, sir, I know. There’s no one like my big brother.” But when Reagan started telling me how liberal he really was—how he had been a brave pioneer in integrating radio—I had to speak up. I had to tell him that, yes, we were good Christians and we appreciated the honor of being invited to this occasion; and yes, we appreciated all his efforts in integrating radio (even though everyone is invisible on radio); but no, we were not supporters; and yes, I did applaud the activities of the Black Panther Party in trying to educate our own people.

“Well, I can respect that,” the governor said.

This was my first encounter with an establishment power figure of this magnitude. I learned a lesson. Such figures often have a begrudging respect for someone who speaks his mind. They respect candor. At the same time, that respect doesn’t alter their ideas. They still dismiss you.

A successful athlete understands that the preparation for competition requires total concentration. The rest of the world falls away as you focus on the most important thing in the world at that moment—winning.

It was 1968, the same year Cliff was invited to the Capitol by Governor Reagan. We found ourselves running in an early spring track meet. Kennedy vs. Sacramento High. It was guaranteed to be a spirited contest. On the day of the meet we were both absolutely focused, promising to leave everything we had at the finish line. And, Lord knows, we did. The euphoria of youth can be a bubble nearly impossible to burst. Even after the final event was over and the public address announcer had announced the final tallies. Even when he added that he had a very important announcement. Even as we began to register what it was he was trying to tell us. Even as we were about to be shaken to our very core.

In Memphis, Tennessee, Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated.

What?

How?

Not possible.

Incredible.

A rumor.

No, a fact.

It happened.

The man is dead.

Now nothing makes sense.

Why am I getting up every morning and running five miles? Why am I training night and day? What’s the point? Who cares who hits the tape first? Who cares if the honor of my school is upheld? Who cares about some silly foot race? What does it all mean anyway?

My life up to that point revolved around winning every track meet and getting an “A” in every course. Now those goals didn’t seem to matter. Hitting the tape no longer mattered. Acing the history paper no longer mattered. Not when they shot down Dr. King like a dog.

Next day Cliff and I quietly joined a protest. Saying nothing, we marched out of school. Hundreds of us simply got up and left. We didn’t have to explain. Actions spoke louder than words. Everyone understood.

I’m not sure I understood. I was reading, reading, reading. I was running, running, running. I was going to church, I was praying alongside my parents, I was mourning the loss of Dr. King, I was feeling an anger and outrage that was hard to control. But did I actually understand the way the world was moving? No, sir. I had to rely on Keats’s “Negative Capability.” I had to remind myself, as the poet had reminded me, that the goal is to chill in that state of “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

Music helped the most. Marvin Gaye spoke to me with “Ain’t That Peculiar.” Sam & Dave said, “Hold On, I’m Coming.” But, oh, Lord, James Brown shut the whole thing down with “Cold Sweat.” Far as I was concerned, that was the existential statement of the decade. It was the groove of life. It was the paradox of paradoxes and the dance of dances. It caught the fury and lit the fire, and, most of all, it kept us dancing.

T
HE REST OF
1968
WAS CRAZY
.
Because Cliff had gotten national recognition for his running, coaches from all over the country were looking to recruit him. Every week another famous track coach was in the house, trying to sell Cliff and Dad on his school. O.J. Simpson came up and personally flew Cliff down to L.A. to sell him on USC. We were all glad, though, when Cliff decided on the University of California at Berkeley. That meant big brother would be close by. Dad drove us up there practically every weekend so we could see Cliff run. We never missed a meet. It was wonderful to see my brother competing—and winning—at such a high level. It also brought me into brief contact with a whole new world of social unrest.

That world—the antiwar white college protestors as opposed to the black civil rights protestors—was foreign to us. I remember Cliff talking about how his roommate at Berkeley, a Jewish brother from the Bronx, had introduced him to a far-out guitar player named Jimi Hendrix.

“He’ll blow your mind, Corn” said Cliff. And he did.

That was cultural information about a radical black artist coming from a radical white brother. Things were changing, and they would change even more dramatically as I entered high school.

High school was heavy for several reasons. My political consciousness, especially after the assassination of Dr. King, was raised. My political involvement intensified. And so did my leadership position. First time I ran for president of the John F. Kennedy student body I was a junior. It turned into a funky affair. Those opposing me stuffed the ballot box and rigged the results. The school was only 10 percent black so they figured no one would care if the black guy lost. But because I was the overwhelming favorite, lots of people cared—so much so that they started talking about going to war with the cheaters. They were talking violence. Cries of “Right On! Right On!” were being heard as “Riot! Riot!”

They were waiting for me to give the word to go to war. I had to think about it. I was tempted. These were fiery times, and I was enflamed enough to see the school go up in flames. But I couldn’t. I didn’t see where it would do any good. Fact is, I saw it hurting the cause. It wasn’t that I wasn’t angry. Man, I was furious. The way they stole the election was cold-blooded. At the same time, though, busting some windows or busting some heads didn’t make sense. So I got the most radical folk together and told them, “Hey, we’ll get ’em next time. We’ll watch the ballot boxes like hawks. We’ll make sure it’s done on the up-and-up.” And special friends like Rick Delgado and Joanne Palmi helped sustain me.

And we did bounce back. Senior year I was elected president.

Throughout high school—and even a little earlier—I started hanging out at the Black Panthers party headquarters in Sacramento. Our proximity to Oakland lent our local Panthers extra passion. Huey and Bobby were around. I liked kicking it with those brothers and sisters because I recognized the legitimacy of their anger. I also recognized that they were saying things that needed to be said. I learned from their newspapers. I saw them as radicals disillusioned with the system, but I also saw them as servants. I saw them as brothers and sisters who loved their people.

At the same time, I had deep differences with the Panthers. I noticed, for example, that every time I’d go to their headquarters to hear a lecture or panel discussion, there was a poster or a piece in the newspaper featuring “handkerchief-head nigger of the week.” Without fail, the guilty party was a minister. Now many of these so-called ministers
were
pimping the people, no doubt about it. But I’d tell the Panthers, “Brothers, how come y’all don’t have no lawyers or doctors or accountants on your posters? Why always a preacher?”

The Panthers liked me because they saw I was student of black history. Even as a young teen I had read Martin and Malcolm. And I knew the work of Franz Fanon. They encouraged my reading but always criticized my Christianity.

“Black Christianity,” they’d argued, “is a source of oppression. This is a party of freedom fighters—and atheists.”

I dug the freedom part, but could never get with the atheism. Besides, the Panthers, for all their good intentions, were caught in a paradox—and I’d be the first to run it down to them.

“Y’all be knocking the church up in here,” I’d say, “but every time I come ’round you got Aretha on the box. You got Marvin, you got Curtis, you got Stevie. You got James Brown.”

The Panthers would laugh and say, “We ain’t going nowhere without Brother James.”

“I hear you,” I’d say, “but these are church folk. They were raised Christian and stayed Christian. Way I see it, the music that’s driving your revolution is Christian music. Now ain’t that something!”

“They’re Christians who’ve been led astray.”

“But their music is leading
you
. And under their music is the love of God.”

“Who doesn’t exist.”

I’d come back with, “Well, his music sure exists. And you’re supporting it. And it’s supporting you.”

These discussions got hot, but my feelings about the Panthers stayed warm. I stayed close to the party, even if the atheism requirement kept me from joining. I liked the black leather outfits and the cool berets; even got me a black leather Panther-styled jacket of my own. But it would take a whole lot more than a political organization sporting hip outfits to separate me from Jesus, especially when the right-here right-now reality of Jesus’s spirit was such a palpable force in my own family.

I would discuss the Panthers with my mom and dad who, most naturally, had their reservations. I’d explain to my parents that, even as Christians, we could learn from the Panthers. “We Christians,” I’d say, “are backwards when it comes to the social analysis of capitalism.”

Mom and Dad were open-minded enough to accompany me to a lecture by Eldridge Cleaver. Cleaver had just published
Soul on Ice
, a hot book in the black community, and I was hoping he’d make a good impression on my folks. Unfortunately, the brother was off the wall. His entire talk was aimed at the sisters. He told them to hold back all sexual favors until the brothers became bona fide revolutionaries. If the brothers didn’t support the party line, the brothers didn’t deserve no loving.

I was flabbergasted. Eldridge spent the entire hour talking about employing sex as a recruitment ploy. Dad looked at me as if to say,
Is this Negro crazy
?

I think he was. I think that the Panthers, even though they would continue to influence me in high school and college, suffered from the absence of a spiritual base. The more I read, the more I realized that black revolutionary nationalism didn’t work for me. No nationalism did. My understanding of Jesus Christ went like this: Everything comes beneath the cross—nationalism, tribalism, patriotism, networks, even kinships. The cross is that critical juncture where catastrophe defines our condition and offers salvation, not in the name of a specific ideology or theology, but in the simple name of love. It is love that saves us from the tyranny of chauvinism and its many manifestations.

A
CONCRETE EXPRESSION OF THE TRUTH
of love happened to me during a field trip to an Indian reservation. I had never seen such abject poverty in the face of children. These red brothers and sisters were living in squalor. It was shocking and heartbreaking. Right then and there, I promised that I would never forget the suffering of indigenous people—I would never allow black suffering to blind me from the suffering of others, no matter what color, culture, or civilization. I was saved from the mistake of devaluing other people’s suffering. Later in life, I would never give a speech about the struggle for freedom without acknowledging the dignity and determination of Native Americans.