Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
In this excerpt from the extended Times piece on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, we see how the bitterness and anger over America's racism overtook him.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
In 1983, Abdul-Jabbar published ‘‘Giant Steps,’’ the first of two engrossing autobiographies. He writes about growing up in the ’50s and ’60s in the Inwood neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, the only child of a Juilliard-trained trombone player turned transit cop and a stylish woman from North Carolina who demanded that her son receive a proper education. As a boy, Abdul-Jabbar - whose birth name was Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. - ran around with a diverse, middle-class crew. This innocence was shattered when his best friend, a white boy named Johnny, ultimately betrayed him in the seventh grade by calling him a ‘‘jungle bunny’’ and a ‘‘nigger.’’ ‘‘I just laughed at him,’’ Abdul-Jabbar writes. ‘‘ ‘[Expletive] you, you ... milk bottle.’ It was the only white thing I could think of.’’
When he started at Power Memorial, Abdul-Jabbar was already known around the city as an up-and-coming basketball star. He was written up in sports dailies and accosted on the subway. A few weeks after his 16th birthday, Richard Avedon shot his portrait. His coach, with whom he became very close and who shielded him from reporters, was an irascible Irishman named Jack Donohue. The older man would talk to his star about the racism he saw while stationed at Fort Knox in Kentucky. On a trip to North Carolina in 1962, his first time alone in the South, Abdul-Jabbar got to see Jim Crow for himself. ‘‘So I knew a little of what Mr. Donohue was talking about,’’ he writes. ‘‘He was certain that racism wouldn’t die until the racists did, and so was I. What I didn’t tell him was that I hoped it would be soon and that if I could help them along, I would be delighted. I wasn’t quite ready to pick up the gun, but I was intimate with the impulse.’’ (His close relationship with Donohue was damaged when the coach told his protégé that he was behaving like a “nigger” during a halftime rant.)
The next year, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., was bombed, killing four young black girls and partially blinding another. Abdul-Jabbar’s impulse hardened into something stronger. ‘‘As I watched the ineffectual moral outrage of the black southern preachers,’’ he writes, ‘‘the cold coverage of the white media and the posturings of the John F. Kennedy White House, my whole view of the world fell into place. My faith was exploded like church rubble, my anger was shrapnel. I would gladly have killed whoever killed those girls by myself.’’
-- Jay Caspian Kang at The New York Times
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
In 1983, Abdul-Jabbar published ‘‘Giant Steps,’’ the first of two engrossing autobiographies. He writes about growing up in the ’50s and ’60s in the Inwood neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, the only child of a Juilliard-trained trombone player turned transit cop and a stylish woman from North Carolina who demanded that her son receive a proper education. As a boy, Abdul-Jabbar - whose birth name was Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. - ran around with a diverse, middle-class crew. This innocence was shattered when his best friend, a white boy named Johnny, ultimately betrayed him in the seventh grade by calling him a ‘‘jungle bunny’’ and a ‘‘nigger.’’ ‘‘I just laughed at him,’’ Abdul-Jabbar writes. ‘‘ ‘[Expletive] you, you ... milk bottle.’ It was the only white thing I could think of.’’
When he started at Power Memorial, Abdul-Jabbar was already known around the city as an up-and-coming basketball star. He was written up in sports dailies and accosted on the subway. A few weeks after his 16th birthday, Richard Avedon shot his portrait. His coach, with whom he became very close and who shielded him from reporters, was an irascible Irishman named Jack Donohue. The older man would talk to his star about the racism he saw while stationed at Fort Knox in Kentucky. On a trip to North Carolina in 1962, his first time alone in the South, Abdul-Jabbar got to see Jim Crow for himself. ‘‘So I knew a little of what Mr. Donohue was talking about,’’ he writes. ‘‘He was certain that racism wouldn’t die until the racists did, and so was I. What I didn’t tell him was that I hoped it would be soon and that if I could help them along, I would be delighted. I wasn’t quite ready to pick up the gun, but I was intimate with the impulse.’’ (His close relationship with Donohue was damaged when the coach told his protégé that he was behaving like a “nigger” during a halftime rant.)
The next year, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., was bombed, killing four young black girls and partially blinding another. Abdul-Jabbar’s impulse hardened into something stronger. ‘‘As I watched the ineffectual moral outrage of the black southern preachers,’’ he writes, ‘‘the cold coverage of the white media and the posturings of the John F. Kennedy White House, my whole view of the world fell into place. My faith was exploded like church rubble, my anger was shrapnel. I would gladly have killed whoever killed those girls by myself.’’
-- Jay Caspian Kang at The New York Times
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>