Dear Emmett Till:
It may seem funny writing to a stranger, but, then again, I feel like I know you. My grade school English teacher Mrs. Lynn first introduced me to you and your story. When I heard about your short life and your tragic death, it scared me. It scared me that a little boy like you—a little boy like me—from the South Side of Chicago could be the victim of such hatred and such violence.
I used to stare at your picture: black and white, you in your suit, smile as wide as can be. I’d look deep into your eyes to see what type of person you might have been. I saw somebody who could have been my classmate, could have been my friend. I saw your innocence and your mischief and the goodness within you and that made it hurt even more to think of how you suffered.
Then there’s the other picture of you. It’s the one that your mother had the courage to share. “Let the world see what I’ve seen,” she said. Your face is bloated, almost unrecognizable. Your soft, handsome features have melted into a death mask. That face haunted my dreams. Could this even be the same boy?
Your story stayed with me. I could feel your spirit—like you were right there, telling me to do the things there wasn’t time for you to do. When I was a ball boy for the Bulls basketball team, I would travel in this tunnel under the old Chicago Stadium. I would always get scared, thinking you were there in the darkness.
I remember finally talking to you, and I know you told me to be strong and do something with my life. “Do something that will have purpose, do something that will be powerful,” I heard you say. I know I met you and I felt, I still feel, that responsibility to be something in my life. I looked at it like I have to live for you, and for all the other sons and daughters who lost their lives in the struggle for black liberation.
Here I was a young black boy from the South Side of Chicago, just like you. Emmett, you gave my life more value. You lost your life to senseless violence. You made me appreciate my life and want to be a greater human being.
I always thought your mother was so courageous, so strong to have demanded that they have an open casket at your funeral. She was determined to show the world what hatred could do. It taught us, it showed us. I always thought, “Why did this young kid have to give up his life? Even if his death helped birth the civil rights revolution, is it fair?” I still can’t answer whether your sacrifice was just.
But, Emmett, I know that your life will never be forgotten. We will remember. I will remember. I will continue to turn your death into a source of life. I will continue to live my life knowing yours was valuable and knowing I have to deliver something that will enhance the lives of others—especially children. Before I met you, all I knew was that I wanted to be a star. After that night, I knew that being a star would have to mean more than people knowing my name. It would mean a commitment to greatness, a commitment to memory.
I know you told me that I had something greater to do on this earth. And I will do that, Emmett, in your spirit and in the spirit of all of those who paved the way for me. I just want you to know your life means something to me and to many others. Your spirit lives on in us.
Love,
Rashid
FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER, I’VE WANTED TO BE A STAR. I still want to be. But now my purpose has more purpose. Now I want to use my fame to provide more exposure for my art so that I can influence people’s lives for the better. I’ve come to realize that being a star means illuminating God’s light.
A little boy from Chicago had dreams to be a star
And make a way and get some pay and drive a fancy car
Though his mama used to say to him, “Hey, boy, just go to school”
But whether it was old or new, in school he broke the rules
—“WHAT A WORLD”
Back when it all started, as a little boy dreaming in the den on Bennett Street on the South Side of Chicago, all I knew was that I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be Michael Jackson, so I practiced my moonwalk and lip-synched along to “Billie Jean.” I wanted to be Magic Johnson, or the hometown hero Isiah Thomas, so I dribbled a basketball wherever it would bounce and cradled it in my arms at night until I fell asleep. I wanted people to recognize me for my talents. I wanted them to honor my gifts. These were my dreams.
I always knew that Rashid was a dreamer. I always knew he had potential for great things. I thought it might be in music at first so I enrolled him in piano lessons. He went a few times, but he just wasn’t interested.
“Mama, I want to play the drums,” he said.
So I got him a drum set. He’d be down in the den banging on that thing for hours—at least it felt like hours! Then one afternoon, I didn’t hear the drums at all. I went in to check on him and he had knocked a hole in the drum and made it into a basketball hoop. He had somehow balanced it on the doorjamb and was lofting a pair of balled-up gym socks at it.
“Well, like father like son,” I thought. From that day, I really thought he might become a basketball player.
THE FIRST SPORT I PLAYED was Little League. What I noticed about playing baseball was the competition. I loved being around other young guys and being able to go up against them. You could get your neighborhood publicity—this dude got heat, or this dude can hit. You would gain a certain amount of respect from people in the neighborhood because your athletic success symbolized that you may have the potential to do something great.
I played shortstop and second base for the Red Sox. I liked being around the grown men—fathers, uncles—who coached us. They were teaching us, telling us what to do, but you could tell they cared for us, too. They’d give you fatherly guidance. For me, baseball was about fun, but at a certain point, I started getting tired of it.
When I was eight years old, I started playing basketball in a neighborhood league. It was in South Central Chicago, at a place called Avalon Park. My uncle was the coach. I started making friends with kids from all walks of life—from the projects and Sixty-third Street. I started learning how to mesh with different personalities, being able to connect and flow with everyone.
The way the games worked, the good players would play the first and fourth quarters and the scrubs would play the second and the third. My friend Dion and I played the second and the third, and, believe me, neither of us liked it. Don’t get me wrong, we were still cool with the other guys, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was second rate. I would get in the game at the start of the second quarter and, instead of playing my best and proving that I should be a starter, I just disappeared. I was on the court, I was running up and down with everybody, but I wasn’t really in the game. I was just . . . invisible.
It got so bad at one point that I decided that I didn’t want to play at all. Of course, I couldn’t tell my uncle that, so I tried a more indirect approach. For the next week, every time the first quarter started running down, I suddenly fell victim to a terrible stomachache. I would be writhing around on the bench, trying to fake some tears. Then, before I knew it, the tears would be real as I thought about how I must be letting down the team, disappointing my uncle, and even disappointing myself. The first few times, my uncle bought it—or at least let on that he did. But when the next week rolled around and I tried the same thing, he had finally had enough.
My uncle Steve was a fun-loving guy, but he didn’t take any mess. When he saw me warming up to do my little act on the bench, he pulled me to the side and laid me out.
“Quit your whining, boy, and get your ass in the game.”
“But—”
“But nothing. I’ve had just about enough of this. Maybe your mama will baby you, but I won’t. I told you to get in that game, so you better get in the goddamn game.”
So I got in the game, but instead of going through the motions, I played with an attitude, a chip on my shoulder. I’m not saying I messed around and had a triple double—it wasn’t that easy—only that I got myself in the right frame of mind to succeed. Over the next several weeks and months, I practiced every day. I’d dribble a basketball as I walked to school to improve my handle. I’d take extra jump shots. I was determined not to be invisible.
Before long, Dion and I were dominating the second and third quarters. Just hurting them! Soon enough we were running with the first team. I’m not sure if I realized it at the time—in fact, I’m sure I didn’t—but that moment was laying some of the foundation for my future success.
How do you deal with being overlooked or underestimated? How do you deal with being raw and unprepared? Do you sulk on the bench, or do you force yourself to confront your weaknesses, to confront your self-doubts and the doubts of others and persevere? Time and again in my life, I’ve had to face these situations, whether it was somebody in the music industry telling me that a “conscious” artist would never sell records or a casting director telling me that I wasn’t going to be any good as an actor. These are the moments that call upon your faith in God—and, through God, in yourself. These are the moments when you gain your definition.
Of course, the light of your greatness only shines if you work hard to cultivate it. You have to hustle. That hustler’s spirit is one of my birthrights. I learned my hustle at home, watching my mother work two or three jobs, seeing how she made a way out of no way. That was my example and my inspiration.
Raising Rashid, I sometimes think I neglected the hustle in favor of education. He grew up in a comfortable middle-class household. He never wanted for anything. I don’t think he’s ever held a job a day in his life. Don’t get me wrong, he’s always had a strong work ethic. He worked so hard as a student that he got straight As from elementary school all the way up through college. He’s worked very hard on his career—first in hip-hop and now in film as well.
But the one thing I notice is that he has a hard time focusing on more than one thing at a time. “I can’t be creative at the drop of a hat,” he’ll tell me. “I can’t work on this thing and that thing all at the same time.” I always say to him, “If you only do one thing at a time, then you’ll only ever do one thing.” It’s the same as eating a balanced diet. Nobody sits down to dinner and only has grains on his plate. You have to have some protein, some vegetables, a few starches, some fruit. It’s the mixture that makes things work for your body. It’s the same thing for your life as a whole.
I remember one time when Rashid was maybe eight years old, he overheard me on the telephone talking to a professor from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I was studying for my doctorate in education. When I got off the phone, Rashid was giving me a funny look.
“Mama, how come you talking white?”
It took all of my composure not to bust out laughing. He was giving me that little-boy serious look, like he was deeply concerned.
“I’m not ‘talking white,’ honey. I’m talking with someone from the university, and when I do that I change up my vocabulary.”
He still looked confused.
“Look, Rashid, do you talk to me the same way you talk to your cousin?”
He shook his head.
“Do you talk to your cousin the same way you talk to God when you pray?”
He shook his head again.
“Well, see, that’s what I’m talking about. You change the way you speak depending on whom you’re addressing.”
Since he’s been grown, he’s mentioned that moment to me several times.
“Now I understand,” he says. “The words you choose matter. That’s exactly what I’ve been dealing with out here in LA. Talking to another artist in the rap game is a whole different thing from talking to directors or movie producers.”
That was an important lesson for him to learn in order for him to be a man of the world. You’ve got to speak the language—and I’m not talking about French or Chinese or German. I’m talking about the languages you speak to different people right here depending on context and circumstance.
I learned these lessons because I had to. Sometimes I wonder whether I could have done more to teach Rashid how to move between multiple worlds. For all of Rashid’s gifts, he doesn’t really have that hustler’s mentality. Perhaps it’s because he never really had to hustle; he never had to face not knowing where he might get his next meal or where he was going to sleep. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe that’s progress. But I can’t help thinking that it’s left him without a certain kind of equipment for living.
In the last couple years, Rashid’s gotten better at balancing several things at once. He’s had to. But I don’t think he understands or even defines hustling in the same way that I do. He’s one of the hardest workers I know. But a hustler? I’m not so sure. He’s still got room to grow. He still has years and years to go.
MY MOTHER EXPOSED ME to a world beyond my neighborhood, beyond Chicago. She did it through education, but she also did it through travel. Whenever she took a trip, I’d take a trip—to Atlanta, to Orlando, Florida, even to the Caribbean. But her greatest gift to me was faith. She probably thought that the sense of security I felt growing up came from knowing that she had my back. That was part of it; I knew I always had somebody there who loved me.
I’m going to tell you something else: for as long as I can remember, I always felt that God was going to bless me and take care of me. I felt in my spirit that God had great things in store for me. I had a sense of destiny. That has been my foundation. It’s the reason I’ve never stopped believing in myself or my path, the reason I’m never afraid. I gained my self-definition through love of family, but also through the journey of faith.
I found that faith at Trinity United Church of Christ on Ninety-fifth Street. Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., the pastor there at the time, gave sermons the way Muhammad Ali fought a title bout. He would dance around with words, dazzling you with his rhetorical bobs and weaves, then he’d knock you out with his spiritual message. He preached the Gospels, of course, but he also preached black pride and black community and black heritage.
Reverend Wright would become my spiritual father: a teacher, a challenger, a source of inspiration to this day. His sermons are music. He is one of the greatest instruments I’ve ever heard playing in the key of God’s word. “Unapologetically black, unashamedly Christian” was the motto, and we all came to live by it. I took that up as a challenge: to wear my blackness and my faith with pride, but not conceit. These were precisely the words I needed to hear as a black boy growing up in a society that often looked at me with fear and distrust.
Many people will know Reverend Wright’s name only because of the controversy that surrounded him near the end of his career as pastor of Trinity. Back in 2008, a member of his congregation named Barack Obama was running for president. Reporters looking for any shred of controversy combed over thousands of hours of tape of Reverend Wright’s sermons and broadcast a couple minutes of his preaching, taken completely out of context. They said he was angry. They said he was racist. They said, how could our future president sit in the pews and listen to such hatred? But they weren’t talking about the Jeremiah Wright that I knew. They weren’t talking about the wise, funny, thoughtful, and loving man who influenced me, and so many others, over his long career.
No one could listen to an entire sermon from Reverend Wright and say that he was hateful. He preached the Gospels. He preached love. To know that I was loved, to know that I was the descendant of African kings, to know that I was a child of the Most High—these things gave my life affirmation. As fortunate as I was to have a mother who loved me and believed in me, it was also important to know that I was valued outside of my family. So many things can chip away at a young person’s self-esteem. So many things can lead to self-doubt. But hearing the message that God was around me, that He was alive in me and could act through me, inspired me to live with purpose, passion, and perception.
“WE HAVE BROTHER COMMON in the house with us this morning. Brother, won’t you come up and bless us with some of your raps?”
It’s New Year’s Eve 2003 at Trinity United Church of Christ, and I’ve come to service with my mother. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is at his usual place on the pulpit. We locked eyes sometime during his sermon, so this invitation isn’t completely unexpected.
“Give it up, y’all. Let’s bring brother Common to the stage!”
I’ve given hundreds of concerts all around the world, performed in front of thousands of people, but this is just about as nervous as I’ve ever been with a mic in my hand. The main thing going through my mind is, “Don’t curse! Don’t curse!” I can just imagine myself in front of all these God-fearing Christians dressed in their Sunday best, here to hear the Word, and in the end they hear the S-word, the F-word, whatever. That’s the last thing I want to do.
So I grasp the mic, and the church band lays down a thick bass line, punctuated by African drums. That’s when it takes over. It’s the feeling one gets—call it divine inspiration, call it the spirit. The times when I’m closest to God are when I’m praying, when I’m reading the Bible, and when I’m creating. And so I find that link, that power, and I’m not worried anymore. I just . . . flow.
When I’m doing a freestyle, my mind is working faster than my mouth, and my memory is all but shut down. You can ask me what I said three minutes after I finish, and I won’t be able to tell you the first thing about it. Sometimes you create for posterity; you create with that sense of timelessness. But sometimes you create something that’s so delicate—so fleeting—that it can last only for a moment. To me, that kind of creation is no less beautiful, no less miraculous. It’s just its own thing.
“Brother Common is playing with me now. He just took my whole sermon and rapped it in two sentences!”
As long as I can remember, Trinity United has been a big part of my life. My mother started taking me there when I was about six years old. Every Sunday, we’d be there. You’d have to arrive early to make sure you got a seat. At the time, Revered Wright was making his name and building a large congregation. In the years that followed, that congregation would help build a new church, more than twice the size of the old one, and would help fill that church with nearly four thousand worshipers every week. People weren’t coming there because it was popular, though, they were coming there for the message, the affirmation. From the Ethiopian crosses that adorned the structure to the African scenes depicted in the stained glass, this was a house of worship dedicated to sustaining the community and connecting it with its Christian roots.
As a young black boy sitting in those pews, I didn’t even realize at first what kind of an education Revered Wright was giving me. He instilled me with pride, but also with humility. He gave me wisdom, but also understanding. His sermons had political texture. He was learned, even erudite, but also hip. More than that, he introduced me to a Jesus who was cool and relatable. Listening to Reverend Wright’s sermons made me want to read—the Bible, of course, but other books as well. And so as I grew up in the church, he would send me to Carter G. Woodson’s The Mis-Education of the Negro and Malcolm X’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X as Told to Alex Haley. He did all of this without even knowing who I was.
Of course, like every child, going to church was also something I did simply because it was something we did. I didn’t always want to go. One Sunday morning when I was ten or eleven years old, I’d had just about enough of this churchgoing stuff. Getting up early, getting dressed in my Sunday best while some of the other kids were on the basketball courts. Sitting for hours surrounded by mostly old folks while the preacher went on and on. I’d had enough.
“Mama, why we have to go to church every Sunday?”
“Boy, it’s not even a question. Get your butt dressed. It’s almost time to go.”
“I don’t wanna go.”
“You better get dressed and get in the car, Rashid. We’ll be late.”
“I’m not going. I’m not going. I don’t even want to live here anymore. I want to move to Denver with my dad.”
That sounded like a good thing to say at the time. I was going to try every angle. But she called my bluff. Before I knew it, she had every scrap of clothes I owned packed up in a suitcase and sitting near the front door.
What was I to do? Back down and show my true weakness—and end up going to church to boot? Or should I stick to my guns, even if it meant heading off into an uncertain future sure to include many of my father’s peanut butter and banana sandwiches and those cold Colorado nights? So, I walked. And I walked—an entire block and a half, before I turned around and headed back home. And got dressed just in time for church.
As a child, it seemed like I spent most of my waking hours in one of two places: church or school. When it was time for me to start kindergarten, my mother enrolled me in the neighborhood school, McDowell Elementary. It was a little yellow and blue schoolhouse with a big window in the front. McDowell was a public school on the South Side of Chicago, which is to say that it brought together the poor and the middle class. Kids who went to McDowell almost always went on to Caldwell Middle School. And as much as I tried to say I wanted to go to Caldwell when I was old enough, I was scared to death of it. That was one of those ’hood schools. If you went there, you’d better be able to handle your business.
Gettin’ green on acres, these broads were our mules
That’s when we used to serve in front of Caldwell School
Fuel for cars and jewels, chains and tools
It was organized crime, but we remained konfused
Mom in the pews singin’, “Lord, protect ’em”
You might not agree with our views, but you had to respect ’em
Diamonds in the rough, but what were we reflectin’
A system that’s abrupt, the streets, and oppression
—“DO THE RIGHT THANG”
I was still a little baby in my own way. McDowell was about as much as I could handle. I had some really good times there. We’d play hill dill and dodgeball. I remember dudes used to climb up onto McDowell’s roof on the weekends just to say they did it. There were definitely kids who fell to the ground and kids who started up, then turned back around. Me? I never tried it.
I didn’t want to leave McDowell. But halfway through second grade, my mother decided that it was time for a change. That’s when she settled on the Faulkner School, where I’d stay until high school. Going from McDowell to Faulkner was like going from Good Times to The Cosby Show. Almost all the kids at Faulkner were from middle-class homes with parents who could afford private school tuition (a whopping two thousand dollars a year, I think!). Faulkner was located on Seventy-first and Coles. It was a comfortable place, sort of like a home learning center. We had only around fifteen kids per class. Everybody knew one another.
Not surprisingly, the kids at Faulkner weren’t nearly as streetwise as my McDowell classmates. My first day at my new school, I was understandably apprehensive, but by the second day, I was walking the halls like I owned the place. I felt confident in my street sensibility. I knew when somebody was about to try something. I could gauge people’s strengths and weaknesses—and I could exploit those weaknesses when I had to—all at the age of seven.
I made friends for life at Faulkner. Two of my best friends started out as enemies. First, there was Murray. I met him the last week of class before summer vacation in my first year at the school. Somehow we had both ended up in detention. I was in second grade; he was in third. I remember Murray teasing me, calling me “Rashit, Rashit.” I hated that. Somehow, before that hour was over, we had developed a bond. The next year, I skipped from second to fourth grade, so we ended up being classmates. We’ve been friends now for thirty years.
Derek Dudley started at Faulkner soon after me. Nobody liked him at first. He had a few strikes against him: (1) he was the new kid, (2) he was vertically challenged, (3) he was way too confident. His father owned a software company, so Derek always seemed to have a lot of nice things. To us, he was rich. He once came to school with this piece of jewelry for a girl he liked. For some reason, that set me off.
“Man, this little Richie Rich dude thinks he’s real tough, don’t he?” I fumed to Dion.
Later that night, I called Derek and threatened him. He hung up, but I kept calling him back. He was just a little too big for his britches as far as I was concerned. The next time I called, it went to the answering machine, so I left a bunch of threats on there for him to hear later on. For some reason it didn’t cross my mind that his parents might hear them first. The next morning, his father came to the school—with a copy of the tape! I caught some heat for that one.
Before long, Derek would become my guy—and now he’s been my manager for many years. Even then, he was really smart at science and math, so I made sure that I was always his partner when it came to school projects. Derek was really advanced. He was into technology, dealing with computers before most of us even knew what a computer was. One year he and I made it to the state science fair—fourth grade, I think. We did this project on fiber optics. First we won the school science fair, then the district science fair, and then on to state. Trouble for me was, the competition fell on the exact same day as my championship basketball game. Around my house, though, there was no discussion. I was going to the science fair or else.
There we were, dressed up in our church clothes, pressed shirts and slacks. We did our demonstration and the judges started peppering us with questions. One judge asked me, “What’s faster: sound or light?” I had no idea. I just hoped it didn’t show on my face. Meanwhile Derek was thinking, “This fool . . . I know he doesn’t know this!”
So I just guessed: “Light.”
“Yes!” Derek blurted.
We didn’t win, but we got a nice little certificate, maybe a ribbon too. Meanwhile, my basketball team won the championship and I wasn’t there. But I was given a special award for choosing academics over sports. Cold comfort.
My other good friend from Faulkner was Dion. The first thing I noticed about him was his comb. Faulkner had a strict dress code, so on Monday through Thursday we had to wear green-and-white uniforms. On Friday we could wear whatever we wanted. Those Fridays were important. You had to come with some style. I remember Dion used to sport this bejeweled comb in his back pocket. He thought he was slick. Dion, better known as No ID, would go on to produce most of the songs on my first three albums as well as hits for Jay-Z, Kanye, and many others. I’m working with him again right now as I write.
Faulkner was so small and homey that we even got to know the teachers.
There was Mr. Brown, who taught us math but would also come to school early to play basketball with us. We thought he was cool because he didn’t get mad if you cussed around him, on the court and even in class sometimes. When it came to teaching math, he was no-nonsense. I thought I was the class clown, so any time it got too quiet, I’d do something crazy like fart or belch real loud. I’d just wait for things to get quiet and then let them rip. But every time you acted out, he’d put your name on the board. If you kept acting the fool, he might add a check or two after it.
“Okay,” he’d say, scrawling your name out in chalk, “you got something else to say?”
For every mark you got on the board, you had to bring five copies of whatever mathematical formula we were learning at the time. Thanks to Mr. Brown, I still know the Pythagorean theorem, the area of a square, cosine, sine, all of that. At one point, after another bout of my foolishness, Mr. Brown pulled me aside.
“Rashid, stop being a bumbler all your life and do something great.”
That resonated with me. He really taught me well in math—and in life. It’s funny how a small moment like that can stay with you forever. If you asked Mr. Brown about it now, he probably wouldn’t even remember saying that. But for me, the moment is indelible. In that moment, too, I was gaining my definition.
Many other teachers at Faulkner influenced my direction. We had an English teacher named Miss Scott. Dion swears she was deaf in at least one ear. Dion and I would be talking to each other in the middle of class, and she would look at us and say, “What? What did you say?” I always did well in her classes, though. She inspired me with my writing. I still see her from time to time at church when I’m back in Chicago. She’ll come up to me without fail and say, “I’m so proud of you, boy! I always knew you were something special.”
One year, maybe around sixth grade, we got a new science teacher. He was Jamaican, and when you stressed him out, he’d start speaking in such a thick patois that you couldn’t really understand what he was saying. The first day of class, he went around the room and asked everyone to introduce themselves. When he got to me, I decided to put a little flavor into mine.
“And who are you, young man?”
“I’m the Cool Chief Rocka, I don’t drink vodka / But keep a bag of cheeba inside my locker.”
He was not amused by my homage to Run-D.M.C. He looked at me like, “What is this imbecile saying?” The other kids were impressed, though.
THE THING THAT REALLY impressed my classmates was when I became friends with a rookie guard for the Chicago Bulls named Michael Jordan. When I was twelve years old, my father helped me get a job as a ball boy for the Bulls. I started working the year before Jordan came into the League and stayed until the year after. Talk about a difference. I got to meet a lot of the players on the opposing teams too, because I worked the visitors’ bench. Magic. Bird. Dr. J. I used to get them to give me their sneakers. Most kids would have collected them and hoarded them. Me? I started my own black-market shoe economy. My biggest customer was my math teacher, Mr. Brown. He’d pay me a few dollars every now and then, but mostly we’d barter. A pair of lightly worn Wes Matthews Pumas, size 12? He’d knock off a few demerits and keep me out of detention.
My first encounter with fame was being around the Bulls. I used to see Isiah Thomas, Julius Erving, Magic Johnson, walking around with furs on. I saw how just because my mother’s friend’s husband knew Isiah Thomas we all looked up to him. Fame was contagious, it seemed. Someone might say, “I heard Vanessa on The Cosby Show used to live up on Pill Hill!” Now everyone on Pill Hill would walk around with their chest puffed out just a little bit more. We definitely were starstruck.
With Michael Jordan, I got to see a star come to life. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that let you know someone’s a star. During one of his first exhibition games, Jordan brought a little red radio into the locker room, blasting Whodini. The general manager, Rod Thorn, came in and said, “Sorry, Michael. You can’t play that in here.” Jordan went out that night and dropped thirty points on somebody, and from then on, he could play whatever he wanted.
Michael was a big kid. He related to the ball boys because we had the same loves: music and basketball. He was a prankster, too. I remember one time I was working a game and this fan sitting courtside asked me to get Michael’s autograph for him. I said I could get it for five dollars. So I went into the locker room and took the piece of paper for Mike to sign.
“Rashid, you sign it.”
Well, why not? So I signed the paper and took it back to the man. He handed me the five-dollar bill and I handed him the forged autograph. He gave it one look and started shaking his head.
“This isn’t Michael Jordan’s autograph!”
“Yeah, it is.”
“No. No, it’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because ‘Michael’ is spelled wrong!”
I used to run some other hustles, too. On game days, I’d sneak Murray into the stadium and he’d serve as an honorary ball boy. I remember one game was Jordan poster night. They gave out five thousand. Murray and I got a couple hundred for ourselves and got Mike to sign a bunch of them. We asked him if we could sell them, and he said, “Nah, you gotta give ’em away.” But, you know, we took twenty or thirty of them and sold them right there in the stadium. In that year alone, I probably had thousands and thousands of dollars in Jordan paraphernalia go through my hands. I got two tickets for the 1985 NBA All-Star Game, including the slam-dunk contest when Jordan and Dominique Wilkins clashed in one of the greatest dunking displays of all time. Murray and I went down to the stadium and scalped our tickets for twice the face value. We were little hustlers like that.
My main responsibility as a ball boy was taking all the used towels after games from the visitors’ locker room to the home locker room on the other side of old Chicago Stadium. I didn’t know it at the time, but Chicago Stadium had been built way back in 1929. It was state of the art, bigger than Madison Square Garden, better than any stadium around at the time of its construction. Over the years, it hosted everything from the Blackhawks and the Bulls, to football games, concerts, and prizefights. Joe Louis fought there. So did Muhammad Ali. The Jackson 5 performed there. So did Bob Marley. You could feel that history in the building, the echoes across the decades. Kids can sense those things.
Once the game was over, I’d stack my arms high with as many towels as I could carry. I wasn’t allowed to cross the court, so I had to take this underground tunnel that snaked below the arena to reach the other side. Running down that corridor made you feel like you were the last person left in the whole world. The lights would flicker sometimes, from dim to almost dark. The sound of your sneakers hitting the concrete would echo through the emptiness. I was always a little scared so I would run as fast as I could. That’s when I saw the ghost.
In Ms. Lynn’s English class, we’d read something about Emmett Till, the black boy from Chicago who’d traveled down South to Mississippi in the summer of 1955 to visit relatives. While there, he allegedly whistled at a white woman who was working as a store clerk. That night white men came and pulled him out of the house. They beat him to death and threw his body over the bridge into the Tallahatchie River, a seventy-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire to keep his body from floating to the top. Three days later, his body washed up on the banks. His features were so distorted, his family could identify him only by a ring he wore that once belonged to his father.
Rather than mourn her lost son in private, Emmett’s mother made his death public, even allowing Jet magazine to publish pictures of his body in an open casket. She wanted people to see the brutality some people were capable of inflicting. For what? A whistle? The color of his skin? They say his death helped launch the civil rights movement. Ms. Lynn showed the pictures to us. His face was bloated, masklike, mangled beyond recognition. Then she showed a picture of him alive just before that summer: smiling, his hat cocked a little to the side. He looked like us. He was just a fourteen-year-old kid—cocky but insecure too. A little like me.
His story and face stuck with me. I remember reading about him and being scared and angry all at the same time. How could this happen? The pictures haunted me. When I was all alone in the tunnel underneath the stadium, I could feel Emmet Till near. When I ran, he was right behind me. The faster I went, the closer he came. But I always remained just beyond his grasp. I just knew that he—that his ghost—was down there. That’s when I decided to stop running and confront him.
“What do you want?” I asked out loud.
There he was before me, his smiling face, hat cocked to the side. He didn’t speak, but all at once, I knew why he was there. He wanted me to do more. He wanted me to be. You have a purpose that’s greater than just yourself. He was a kid like me, and they took his life. Others had lost their lives so that I could live mine in freedom. I had every opportunity. Now I just had to be great: for my family, for my mother, for my people, for me. From then on, I wasn’t scared of the dark.
Ever since that night, I’ve felt the spirit of Emmett Till driving me, pushing me past all sorts of challenges, inspiring me to achieve. I believe that still to this day. Gaining one’s definition demands that we learn from others’ experiences as well as our own. It means seeing yourself as part of a community—of family, of faith, and even of history.