Brother West

by Cornel West

  None of this made me challenge the power of Christ-based love. I lived with people who modeled that love—my mom, my dad, my brother, my sisters, my grandparents, my preacher. They modeled humility. In their own way, they washed the feet of those they served, just as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. But at this critical juncture in my life I also knew what Keats was talking about. If Jesus Christ could express his uncertainties and doubts, then the English poet was pointing me in the right direction. I didn’t have to resolve every contradiction or inconsistency. When I read the poetry of Walt Whitman, I could understand why he answered the question, “Do I contradict myself?” with “Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”

  Because I was considered precocious, I was asked to deliver sermons during the junior church service. I tried to avoid it, not because I felt incapable, but because it meant missing a sermon by our pastor, Willie P. Cooke. Cooke was not bombastic, although he would have Holy Ghost visitations during his sermons. He was not intellectual. He was sincere. He loved to talk about the litany of love. He started each sermon by quoting Psalm: 121 “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord.” Later in my life, when I began speaking in churches, I followed his lead and started with those same wonderful words. He was a man of deep discernment and genuine charity. He was humble. He wasn’t interested in hellfire and he wasn’t interested in self-aggrandizement. It seemed right that he was a carpenter as well as a preacher. The only other preacher who came close to Reverend Cooke’s depth of spirit was Reverend Dr. J. Alfred Smith, the renowned pastor of Allen Temple Baptist Church of Oakland, California. As an adult, I’ve been blessed to speak and preach many times in his church.

  Back in my childhood, I remember that my first sermon in junior church focused on Jesus as the “water of life.” I took it from John 4:14. I worked it hard. I compared the pure water of Christ to Kool-Aid—one can sustain you, the other can’t. The congregation got to rocking and I got to rocking even harder. If my desire to hear Reverend Cooke hadn’t been so keen, I’m sure I would have worked up more sermons. I had some rhetorical gifts and I liked the inspiration it gave to others. But I have never received the calling to preach. I am neither licensed nor ordained as a minister. I see it as a sign of God’s wisdom that I was never chosen to be a pastor. I have tremendous respect for that calling. But I know that, as a preacher, I would fall far short of the mark. Ironically, many people do believe that I’m a Christian minister simply because I speak in a preacherly style. But the simple truth is that I’m a Christian bluesman in the life of the mind and a Christian jazzman in the world of ideas.

  As a child, Cooke’s beautiful soul kept calling me. I also loved the way he called on the deacons to serve the parishioners. Deacon Hinton was our designated mentor. He was childless and treated me and Cliff like sons. Lord, this man was a loving soul! He was a chauffeur who drove for white folks. Every summer he’d make sure to take me and Cliff to the picnics put on by his rich employers. We were the only blacks in attendance. It was like something out of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel about social yearning and spiritual malnutrition. Strangely enough, though, Cliff and I didn’t do a lot of yearning. We were too happy running around the great manicured lawns and gardens of the wealthy. We won all the foot races. Played ball with the kids. Asked if we could borrow their mitts. “Hey, man,” we’d say, “nice glove you have here. Mind if I use it?” “No, go ahead.” It was an easy rapport. Deacon Hinton carried us to these picnics every year of our childhood. We developed friendships and allowed the social graciousness of the occasion to wash over us. And I believe that we, being the children of Irene and Clifton West, brought some social graciousness of our own.

  SOME OF THE RESIDENTS OF FLORIN, a white district on the other side of Glen Elder, were not especially gracious. Between our neighborhood and Florin was Black Hills, a large landscape of open fields overrun by weeds. Black Hills was the demilitarized zone. Mom and Dad, for example, never ventured into the area while Cliff and I fearlessly charged full steam ahead. We liked Black Hills because it was raw and wild and rabbits ran free. We’d take our BB guns and our dog and hunt down the hares. Didn’t matter to us when we got close to Florin. But to some folk it mattered a lot. When one white man spotted us, he sicced his ferocious Rottweiler on our mutt. When we tried to rescue our dog, the guy pulled out a gun and told us to stay put. Somehow our dog escaped, and so did we. Cliff and I might have been able to take the guy, but we were too smart to challenge his pistol. A week later, though, when our dog was healed, we went right back into Black Hills, figuring it was just as much our territory as anyone else’s.

  Yet the real racial integration of my school life didn’t happen till junior high. I was placed in advanced classes, just as Cliff had been. And just like Cliff, I was often the only black student in the college placement classes. Cliff was a school leader and became president of the student body. Three years after Cliff, I was elected to the same office. Naturally that meant we were able to win over white kids, since whites comprised the vast majority of the student population. I was voted Most Likely to Succeed, Best Scholar, and Most Popular.

  IN 1967, WHEN I WAS FOURTEEN, Mom and Dad made a big decision. They saw a house that they liked in South Land Park, an all-white middle-class suburb, and decided to buy it. We would be the first blacks in the neighborhood. The home represented an upgrade. It gave us more space and was located on a quiet street. Cliff, my sisters, and I were excited—though we hated to leave Glen Elder. It was something nicer than what we were used to, and we were up for the adventurous move.

  The adventure got ugly.

  When the white neighbors heard that we were coming, they panicked. They decided to stop us, as in Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play, A Raisin in the Sun. They had a series of meetings in which they concluded that the only way to keep us away was to pool their money and buy the house out from under us. But Mom and Dad were organized and efficient professionals. They had made certain that the mortgage papers were in order, the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed. The house was ours. When the neighbors saw that the financial tactics wouldn’t work, they got down and dirty. They went to threats. Nasty notes in the mailbox. Ugly phone calls.

  Dad reacted in typical Dad fashion. He didn’t answer their name-calling with names of his own. He didn’t threaten them back. He didn’t get a gang of his friends together and come back with a show of force. He simply put on his coat and tie and began going door to door to all our neighbors. He’d knock politely and when the resident responded, he said, “Just want to introduce myself. I’m Cliff West, and my wife and I, along with our four kids, have moved into that house just down the street. We’re hardworking folks and are pleased to be able to live in such a nice part of town. We intend to be good neighbors, and I want you to know if there’s anything that we can do for you, all you have to do is ask. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  The neighbors were disarmed. Dad’s kindness would unnerve the unkindest person around. The threats and the ugly calls stopped, but that didn’t mean that we were given welcome baskets and warm apple pies. We hardly heard a “good morning.” Rarely did we see a friendly smile. The vibe was cold as ice.

  “Don’t matter,” said Dad. “We’re here to stay. Let the people react however they react.”

  One man, though, reacted with love. His name was Tom Hobday. He was a white brother—I call him the John Brown of our neighborhood—who immediately saw that the West family was up to good. He befriended Dad. When it was time for the Golden West Track Meet, Mr. Hobday extended us a personal invitation.

  “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.

  CLIFF 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.

  THE 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—s
o 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?”