Growing Up King

by Dexter Scott King

  My attention span, my ability to reason and focus, was becoming more of a problem. I had anxiety attacks. Sweating. Fearing something bad was going to happen, yet not knowing exactly what, which made it worse. I couldn’t sit still in a classroom and listen to the teacher—I was constantly jumping ahead or around, frustrating the teachers because I would stop their roll, ask, “Why is this, why is that?” and they would get irritated. I was treated like “the black,” a special “black” kid.

  African Americans had at the time progressed, if it can be called that, from “Negro” to “black.” At Galloway, we were different from other blacks, to the white kids. Galloway was 98 percent white; of that number many were Jewish. But there was a feeling, gleaned from others, that I was different.

  “You’re a privileged black, aren’t you?”

  The inference was, You can’t relate to these other “blacks,” can you? I’d be having lunch and talking about a football game or a new record album or something and suddenly and unwillingly I was involved in commentary on “black” issues and had to defend my background. My school chums’ parents obviously had said some things at home that the kids would regurgitate in school.

  One of the issues at school was Maynard Jackson being elected the first black mayor. A lot of things happened in 1974. Jackson took office as the first black mayor of Atlanta. He was elected in ’73, but took office in ’74. He showed up at my grandfather’s home to pay his respects, always with his bodyguard. My siblings and I had activities, but we never went to pistol ranges, never went skeet shooting, never went hunting. Police were integral in my development, because when you don’t have a father you substitute people who are more visible who represent a male presence. Maynard’s bodyguard took time to play with us. Maynard’s bodyguard became chief of police. His name was Eldrin Bell. I remember admiring him. At that time he was a sergeant.

  I also had met Maynard Jackson. My family knew his family, and he knew who I was, and I knew who he was. He wasn’t really that close to any of us then, but there was always a cordial family respect. His family grew up here, but mainly in his younger years; he was away for some time too, then came back. He was important to me on a symbolic level. The fact that I had history with him made me feel special about him. He was much more important to me than he was to most of the kids at Galloway—or to their parents. At Galloway in the seventh grade I would get into these debates with other seventh graders over them saying he was not “qualified” to be mayor. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. You’re hearing twelve- and thirteen-year-olds saying, “Well, it’s a shame, he’s not qualified,” as if they were authorities on political parties and pressure groups. Here I am, thirteen, defending full-grown man Maynard Jackson.

  Didn’t Maynard have a long history of being in the city government at that time? Yes he did. He was vice-mayor before he was mayor, I said. On the city council, I said. Came up through the ranks, I said. Morehouse man, I said. I said all that, to much eye-rolling among my classmates. Those were my comebacks. Clearly, “not qualified” was their emotional response, given matter-offactly, tossed off like science—science of spin. Attacking Maynard was emotional, self-serving, not supportable by fact, primal, and racially charged. All the stuff that would usually be ascribed to black folks. Pot calling the kettle black. What disqualifies Maynard?

  “What?… Well, he just isn’t,” they would insist.

  I pointed to the skin of my own hand. “Is this what disqualifies him?”

  I was constantly getting in debates and arguments over this kind of thing. Occasionally there might be a kid who would say the “n” word casually, not to me, not in a charged way, but just around me, and I would have to speak on it. Maybe twice it happened. But it did happen.

  There was this one kid—Rogers Baker Wolfe, I’ll call him. He was more maladjusted than the rest of my schoolmates. He wanted me to feel different, to feel bad, to be inferior, and to be happy about it.

  “Hey, Dexter King, you hear about what the blaaaacks did yesterday?” Rogers Wolfe might say. As if I was responsible. When the Atlanta child murders—the mysterious murders of twelve prepubescent black boys in West End and other inner-city areas—began at the end of the decade, I wondered about Rogers Baker Wolfe, if he was taunting any innocent blacks about that.

  At Galloway, there were a lot of affluent kids whose parents were heads of corporations, that kind of thing. Most were cooler than Rogers. I got invited to bar mitzvahs. Children who invited me into their homes came to ours. Mother said, “If you go into their homes, they come into ours.”

  In many ways I had both worlds, if not the best of both worlds, growing up in Vine City, a black working-class neighborhood. I had relatives in middle-class black suburbs; I was going to an avant-garde school with white children of industrialists and professionals, exposed to views that amused the white middle-upper class and drove the white working class. Most of my playmates at home were lower-income, from broken homes, but with extended-family support; by day, I was dealing with people who were from well-to-do homes economically but who might have been in broken homes emotionally or on other levels. A lot of kids I knew were dysfunctional for different reasons. I saw it all—thirteen-year-old alkies or addicts at Galloway. Drugs were in Vine City, but not the worst kind, not yet, not yet the crack cocaine that finally leveled it.

  On one hand, some of my classmates at Galloway were wealthy, but on the other hand maybe their parents were not there, not hands-on. Even when families were together, they weren’t together spiritually. I was exposed to kids in the ’hood who were from broken homes but were genuinely good people, spiritual people, who didn’t have the means to rise and had to pin their hopes on the following generation. Till this day I feel comfortable in any environment. I could hold my own back then. I accomplished this by trying to appear calm and saying nothing. Let others make the mistakes first. Elliott Galloway always seemed to me to be an optimistic person. He was not imposing physically. Everything about him was medium. Medium height, medium build. Tweedy, just a little bit. Reminded you of an “all-American” type person. An all-American type guy who was always up, just very optimistic, very extroverted you know, kind of a cheerleader type. Loose collar. Just seemed very accessible. Could get serious too. Interactive. When he got serious, he’d put on his glasses. Then you knew he was serious. He didn’t wear them all the time.

  In 1976, I transferred to Frederick Douglass High, a predominately black public high school. Nearly three thousand students attended Douglass. Martin had by then graduated from Galloway and gone to Morehouse. Bernice and I left Galloway a year after he did; I wanted to go to Douglass because Isaac went there. Bernice left Galloway because I did. Isaac was going to Douglass for his second year. I joined Isaac in entering tenth grade. Bernice went there as an eighth grader.

  I also wanted to play football; there was no football team at Galloway.

  For you to know how important football was to a young man at the time in Georgia, think of how important basketball is to a young man in an inner city today—then double it. Or go to Atlanta today during football season and see how much coverage is given over to high school football in editions of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The high schools get more ink than the NFL Atlanta Falcons. Then, and probably now, there was a social order and acceptance to playing football, a communal sense I desired, wanted to be a part of, wanted to experience.

  My mother seemed to be open to Douglass. After all, my father had gone to Booker T. Washington High, another public high school. I don’t remember any resistance one way or the other. Douglass. We knew it was a good school academically in terms of its rating; it was west, over on Hightower Road, now renamed Hamilton E. Holmes Drive after one of the two black students who integrated the University of Georgia, at the foot of Collier Heights. I think she was comfortable with Douglass because she knew my Aunt Christine would not be sending her kids to a school that was underachieving. Aunt Christine was a college professor at Spe
lman. Still is.

  Douglass is on the west-by-northwest side of town. If you’re going toward Six Flags, I-20 West. The surrounding neighborhood had an interesting mix if you could discern it; though it was nearly 100 percent black, you still had kids from all walks of life, from the projects to the wealthiest black kids in the city from Collier Heights. People also started moving into Cascade, which had been all white traditionally; white flight came when a few blacks started moving in. Pretty over there. Not built by blacks. Collier Heights was founded by blacks.

  The Atlanta I grew up in at the end of the 1970s was a busy city. Growing. Since John D. Rockefeller had bought all this land on the near west side of town for Spelman, Morehouse, and Atlanta University, and since the Methodists had moved Morris Brown College from over Auburn Avenue way to the AU Center, along with Clark, the west side was different from most inner cities. The colleges themselves brought a professional class—instructors and administrators. Movement outward toward the suburbs on the west side was overwhelmingly black.

  Something was always being built in Atlanta in those times. Topographically, streets changed to accommodate construction. A two-way street became one-way to accommodate growth. Highways expanded. I was always out traveling. I drove to school the spring of my last year as Atlanta turned luxuriant, verdant green. I appreciated that the city was well-kept. Clean. You didn’t see a lot of trash on the streets, things that make a city seem run-down. In Atlanta, I always felt I was in a clean, fresh place and a pretty place just purely from an aesthetic point of view. In terms of attitudes… that was another story.

  I always saw football as about being a member of a team—a way of being accepted and getting respect. I always saw the sport as a chance for a camaraderie I hadn’t known for years—being able to interact on a level with my peers while growing up. In high school, I wanted to identify with others my age, not be apart from them, to be down with the fellows, the peer group. What’s more important to a teenager than to act, think, and dress like those of his generation? Very little I know of. I think football gave me that.

  Maybe it was a macho thing too. I know it was a tough experience; some of the players didn’t readily accept me, not at first. Maybe it wasn’t because I was the son of Martin Luther King, but because I was fresh meat, somebody who wanted to join and had to be initiated. They tested me because they wanted to see if I was real. I would always be tested to see if I was a real person or the saintly son of a saint; it’s one of the burdens of my particular legacy. When I first got to school, the B-team defensive coach took a liking to me and put me on the squad. Coach Montgomery gave me a chance at running back and linebacker. He saw potential in me. Put me on first team. When the season ended, he brought me up to the varsity. All advanced players were brought up. The B-team was JV.

  I was in tenth grade. It was the first day in the locker room with the varsity football team at Douglass High, the Douglass Astros, me, Dexter King, one of the royally cursed King children—I was a ’Stro! Just as I was feeling I was part of this great thing, here come the three biggest guys on defense. They jumped on me and basically “initiated” me—let me know who was boss. I then also found out that I could hold my own too; that sometimes when you fight back, it hurts less than if you just let someone pummel you. Afterward, through the shiners and bloody lip and everything, the smiles were warm and sincere and the experience led to a different kind of bond. After that episode there was a newfound respect in their eyes that I had earned by my own actions, not from the passive notion of being the son of the prophet of the Civil Rights Movement.

  They said, “He real. He King’s son, but he real. He ain’t plastic. He bleeds. I seen him bleed.”

  I ultimately became captain of the defense as middle line-backer. Yet that awareness was always there. “Hey… son of Martin Luther King!”

  There was no getting away from it.

  Football wasn’t the whole school experience, though. Not everybody rallied to football necessarily to embrace me. Some used it to ridicule me, critique me, maybe to see what I was about in responding. I was for them intriguing. Sometimes I felt humiliated; the way they’d chide me in the cafeteria or hallway. Walk down the halls and you could see them pointing, whispering, not caring to be discreet. “Martin Luther King’s son,” pointing. Another one would loudly say, “No it’s not.” “Yeah it is.” “Ain’t.” “Bet a dollar that’s him.” And then they would walk over to me and stop me and say, “What’s your name?” Just like that. No hello. No warm fuzzies.

  I might say, “I’m Dexter, nice to meet you.”

  “Yeah? Dexter what?”

  “King.”

  “You lying. Your name ain’t no King. Your name King f’real?”

  When I’d say, “I’m Dexter King,” the other one might say, “No you’re not.”

  “Yes I am.”

  “No, you’re not, ’cause if you was, you wouldn’t be here with us.”

  I’m saying, Hold it. Saying that to myself later on, after the fact, because I’m speechless in the situation as it is happening. I don’t know how to respond. For the longest time I walked around thinking that in the predominately white environment at Galloway School I wasn’t totally accepted, and had to debate whether Maynard Jackson was qualified, or whether Hank Aaron deserved to be mentioned with Babe Ruth, or whether black people can do math and science, endlessly proving myself, having to always take a “black position” on a “black issue.” Now here I was at Douglass, thinking I’d be comfortable, only I was having to prove myself again. From then forward I realized I didn’t really fit in anywhere.

  Even some of the teachers at Douglass High might say, “Your father was up above all of us.” I’d say, “He was one of the people.” But they’d always have the last word. About my father. This would become a life trend—people telling me what my father was and wanted, having the last word about my father. “One with the people. Not one of the people.” He did everything he could to have us belong, and yet people would not let us. We were trying and Mother was trying. It wasn’t phony baloney. And it was a long time before I started to say to myself, “So what? So what that you don’t fit in anywhere? Who does? What’s so great about fitting in places that need changing anyhow?” But those weren’t my thoughts back then.

  That happened throughout school, into college, even today: being a part of a “living legend,” as if people don’t know how else to relate to you. I didn’t have many peers I could hang out with because where do you find somebody else who’s the son of a pope? Where do you congregate? Where do you go?

  When people judge you, it’s subjective. You are always being compared to this more-than-a-man, once-in-a-lifetime phenomenal presence. So who’s to determine what’s right and wrong about you? Nothing is right enough. Conforming was a problem. Conform to what? Compared to what? When I started deejaying parties in high school, of course people found that odd. I should be doing serious things. Couldn’t do something because I was good at it or enjoyed it, but weren’t these the privileges of youth? In photography, I shot the homecoming events, parades. Sometimes I’d get in trouble because I’d pass photo proofs around and end up in the assistant principal Mr. Hill’s office. This gentleman later became principal at Douglass for many years. Mr. Hill took his job seriously, and more so because he had the children of Martin Luther King in his charge. He sat me down and said:

  “Ah, Dexter. You know you are in violation of the Sherman antitrust act. You have a monopoly on selling photographs and you are disrupting class.” And I mean, he was serious.

  Photography, deejaying, and football all helped me commune with my peers. Without those activities, I might have been even more lost. I got to feel normal, even if it was from behind a camera viewfinder, a turntable, or the face mask of a football helmet. That was as close as I could get. My senior year, we won the high school football championship of our region. We were a good team, one of the top teams in the state of Georgia. We went to the state championships and
got to the quarterfinals, where we lost to Griffin, Georgia. In Atlanta, our region, we were number one. High school football was significant to me; I contributed to something real; I believed my father might have been proud; I had a chance to spread my wings at Douglass, clipped as they were. I found out I was athletic. I joined the track team, and put the shot. I made the tennis team, played singles and doubles. What else could I do in life?

  Since his name was Isaac N. Farris, Jr., and since he bore small resemblance to me, he could disappear. He said he had the best of both worlds, access to the world of notoriety, but at the same time he could step back from it. Especially in the earlier years. Everybody in school knew who he was, son of the sister of Martin Luther King. And things were happening. Somebody would make a death threat against us, cops would have to come to the school, things of a strange nature. Happened more than once. Who would be next?

  This began in ’74, before I came to Douglass. Around the time of my grandmother’s death, we got a kidnapping threat. This was the era of the Patty Hearst kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army in California. All kinds of kidnapping threats were going on. Hank Aaron’s daughter was threatened with kidnapping while she was at Fisk, right when he was threatening to break Babe Ruth’s home run record. An editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution named Reg Murphy was kidnapped. The King family got a threat. Police posed as teachers at Galloway.

  We grew up in an environment of house and church bombings, shootings, murders, jailings, beatings. We were desensitized in that way; we knew there was always a possibility of danger, but we didn’t walk around looking over our shoulders. Not consciously anyway. My brother had just started to drive, and when we’d ride places, there’d be a cop car following us around, which was awkward. You go to a high school function, you’ve got a cop car following you. It cramps your style. And there was always security around; how awkward it was to live like that. Subliminally, you begin to think people were out to get you.