Education, Racism, Football, and Mama

If you want to capture boys’ attention, talk football (at least in Europe). Paul Canoville, who helped break the color barrier in British soccer spoke at the International School of Geneva about racism in sport to tie in with United Nations Day of Tolerance Nov. 17, 2010 and March 21st International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

« Mama said, ‘get an education ! » Canoville said in a high pitched voice with a Caribbean accident, wiggling his hips imitating his mama.

Chelsea's player Paul Canoville

« Don’t worry Mama, football gonna take care of me. » said the first black man to play for Chelsea in 1981, who still remembers that pain of racial abuse when even his own fans called him animal names.

« My Mama, from a poor Caribbean family, came to England alone and dreamed of becoming a nurse, but never had the chance to become educated. She worked hard all her life. She didn’t care about football ; she wanted me to go to school.»

When Canoville’s career ended to a knee injury at age 25, no one took care of him, especially not football. After a downward spiral of drug addiction, street life and jail time, he turned his life around. His autobiography, Black and Blue received the best British sport book award in 2009.

After Canoville’s visit to our campus, three of my freshman students, a a tall dark-haired Italian basketball player, a blond blue-eyed Austrian footballer, and a young Swiss tennis man wrote him this letter.

Dear Mr. Canoville

Thank you for coming to tell us a story that has the power to make people change their way of thinking about racism. In school we always learn about the history of racism, what it is about, what it provokes, but we have never had a witness talk to us about his experiences. It is a privilege that students will cherish. Most kids are sports fans, and many would love to play professional football later in life. The opportunity to hear a famous footballer sharing important views so freely is fantastic. It has even more of an impact when you are funny. When you tell your life altering stories and describe the appalling behavior you confronted, you showcased your great sense of humor and positive way of seeing things. A person will always face challenging times, but if you fight for what you believe in, no matter how unfair things seem to be, you can do just about anything. You taught us this. We would love for you to come back and pass your experiences and knowledge on to other generations of students.

Canoville’s final words to our students were “Always have a back up plan. Get an education. And listen to mama. Mama knows best!”

Here’s to all the mamas around the world, making sacrifices everyday, giving children a better chance through the opportunity of education.

Anne Frank, Miep Gies, Erin Gruwell –Solitary Voices Speak Out To Make a Difference

We hear the stories of great male leaders discovering new lands, leading nations to battle, defending human rights, but what about everyday valiant acts by ordinary women. “Courage doesn’t always roar. “

“You are not defined by this moment in time
You are not defined by what has happened to you
It is the way that your choose to respond
That matters what you do
And what you decide to do
Courage is not the absence of fear
But a powerful choice we make…”
From Courage Doesn’t Always Roar By Paula Fox

During WWII, a soft-spoken, young secretary helped hide her boss’s Jewish family in an attic in Amsterdam. When the Gestapo discovered the Frank family, Miep Gies risked her life again, by hiding Anne’s diary (written between June 12, 1942 – August 1, 1944) from authorities. In 1947, Otto Frank, the only family member who survived the concentration camp, published Anne Frank Diary of A Young Girl, which sold 31 million copies, was translated into 67 languages, and has been studied worldwide including my English class at the International School of Geneva.

Miep Gies Feb. 15, 1909 – Jan. 11, 2010

In my class, I continued my lesson about Dr. Boswell’s pre Civil War quilt codes guiding slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad with another exercise to show the bravery and ingenuity of everyday people.

Franco-Suisse Hotel Arbez

A half hour from our campus, the Franco- Swiss Hotel Arbez at La Cure sits on the borderline dividing the two countries. During WWII, the owners hid British and American soldiers and Jewish civilians from the Nazis. The bottom of the staircase lies in German Occupied France; the top of the stairs “the Hideaway,” a second floor room, is on Swiss territory. Refugees disappeared into the mountains on the neutral Swiss side.

After showing examples messages stitched in quilts, I asked my students to sketch symbols that could help map the route for imaginary refugees escaping from our school to the French border at La Cure.

Over a half-century later, another daring woman, Erin Gruwell, inspired 150 disillusioned tough kids from broken homes and street gangs, to use writing to bring about change. The Freedom Writer’s Diary, published in 1999, was the true story her freshman English class at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. In 2007 the movie Freedom Writers was released, and the Freedom Writer’s Foundation website was established. http://www.freedomwritersfoundation.org/site/

After reading Anne Frank, Miss Gruwell’s class then raised funds to fly Miep Gies over from the Netherlands to speak at their school. After Miep speech,

Marcus, a husky, former gang member, once living in the street, raised his hand and stated, “You are my hero!”

“Oh no, young man, I am not a hero,” she said. “You are the heroes in your own life story – I just did the right thing at the right time.”

Single voices. Small steps. Soft whispers. Subtle strength. Simple women of courage stand out.

Women’s History Month – Quilts Connect From Pre Civil War to the 21st Century

“When you can effectively deny a man of his history, you can effectively deny him of his very humanity.” The statement from A Handbook for Teachers of African American Children by Baruti K. Kafele, an award-winning educator, whose first name means teacher, is so true.

What about women’s history? It astounds me that with all the great leaders in the world, when I ask my freshmen English class to write about heroes, most fourteen-year-old girls, choose celebrities like Lady Gaga to idolize.

“When I was your age,” I explained to my class, “women were second-class citizens. Female athletes and books about them were non-existent; very few female biographies were published. My hero was Harriet Tubman a brave, athletic slave who escaped to freedom and then led others on Underground Railroad.”

“How did a white girl end up with a black slave for hero?”

Women were obliterated from literature, except in the role as damsel in distress. Like Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, rebelling against the role of Southern white belle, I fought the confines of traditional womanhood in the 70s.

Lenore' s quilt for granddaughter

Yet individual acts of courage can make an extraordinary difference. Rosa Parks sat down so the nation would stand up for Civil Rights. Jane Addams, the first female Nobel Peace Prize recipient, helped poor Chicagoans survive the Great Depression. Harriet Tubman risked her freedom and her life helping 300 other slaves escape north.

Other heroes followed a more traditional path like my mom, Lenore McKinzie, who combined family and career. She instructed and nurtured, inspired and sewed. My mom’s passion led her to attend Dr. Clarice Boswell’s lecture on Pre-Civil War Quilts. Dr. Boswell explained how the codes stitched in quilt patterns signaled safe routes on the Underground Railroad and recounted her family ancestry in her book, Lizzie’s Story – A Slave Family’s Journey to Freedom.

So where is this going? Dr. Boswell’s daughter, Cathy Boswell, a 1984 Olympic Gold Medalist, entered Illinois State University the year after I graduated. In my first coaching gig, Cathy starred on the team I coached at summer camp.

Now my class was hooked; the lesson tied in with basketball and the Olympics.

My international students thought the Underground Railroad was a real train tunnel. They had never heard of Harriet Tubman. Most had no clue what a quilt was either. I handed out photocopies of the Pre Civil War quilt patterns and then passed around an example of the mini quilt cover my mom made me. She sewed a red cardinal, Illinois’ state bird, also my Norwegian grandmother’s favorite, into the green and gold cloth as an everlasting a symbol of my own ancestry.

Dr Clarice Boswell

From Harriet Tubman to Jane Addams to Rosa Parks, “little” women made a big impact on history. From Betsy Ross to Clarice Boswell to Lenore McKinzie, American women connected generations in the great tapestry of humanity, one stitch at time.

Information on quilting events: http://www.northernillinoisquiltfest.com/events.html

October 20, 2011, 1:30 p.m. McHenry County Historical Society Museum: Dr. Clarice Boswell Presents – Pre-Civil War Quilts: Their Hidden Codes to the Freedom of Slaves through the Underground Railroad at the McHenry County Historical Society Museum. (Union, Illinois)

Dr. Jone’s Dream: Equal Education Long Before Brown v. Topeka Kansas

I teach at the world’s oldest and largest international school where the annual tution costs as much as a year of elite university in the states. My students, from affluent families valuing education, cannot understand how minorities denied equal education remain powerless within societies. In 1896 the 14^th Amendment guaranteed full rights of citizenship to anyone born in the USA, yet Plessy v. Ferguson, a ruling that same year, upheld social segregation of “white and colored races”. Over a half century later little had changed. The “separate but equal” doctrine provided the legal basis for racial segregation until the 1954 Brown v. the Board of Topeka, Kansas case. Thirteen families representing twenty school children, led by the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall, who became the first African American judge, challenged the Supreme Court’s decision and deemed the doctrine unconstitutional. This helped spark the Civil Rights Movement and led to integration of not only schools, but also public places.

Dr Jones & school children

In 1909, long before that epic battle, Laurence Jones, a black man with a vision, turned an abandoned sheep shed into The Piney Woods School with meager donations from an impoverished community. This was the beginning of his dream to educate underprivileged black children in destitute, rural Rankin County, Mississippi. Over a century later, that one room school has become a thriving 2,000 acres campus, with a high school that can justly boast “we are changing America, and the world, one student at a time.” Alumnus went on to Princeton, Howard, and Tuskegee pursuing degrees in medicine, education, marketing and other careers to become leaders in their fields.

When my grandparents, Ralph and Betty McKinzie, retired from teaching at NIU and DeKalb High School, they dedicated two years of service teaching at Piney Woods. During Easter break 1968, on a trip to visit my grandparents, we drove through the deep South where I saw ram shackled lean-tos, the remnants of slavery.

Jim, Ralph, Betty McKinzie, Martha Olson, Dr. Jones

“How come the Negroes live in shacks?” I asked with the innocence of an ten-year-old.

“Because they are so poor.”

“Why are they so poor?”

“Because they don’t have any land.”

“Hey, I see lots of land,” I said pointing towards a sprawling plantation with stately white pillars. “The whole town could fit in that house; it’s bigger than a hotel!”

At Piney Woods School, my brother and I played basketball with the black boys on a dirt court in a sun-baked paradise surrounded by pine and honey-scented pink and white magnolias. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

“Isn’t it great how well they get along?” my dad asked.

My sisters and new friends

“If only we could remain children in our hearts,” my grandma replied.

As we piled suitcases on top of the Rambler to head back North, a young girl peeked behind her big sister’s cotton skirt to stare at the first white family she’d ever seen.

“Schootch together,” Grandma said, “so I can take your picture.”

I stood by my new friend, the color of chocolate, and beamed as the camera clicked. Then I reached over and took her soft warm hand in mine. It fit just perfect.

Photographs of my childhood remain etched in my soul forever. Just as my grandma had hoped, I remained a child in my heart, befriending people from all four corners of the globe in my international community where I teach as an adult.

http://www.pineywoods.org/

President’s Day February 21 and Family Ties to the White House

Many people I meet in Europe look clueless when I tell them I am from Illinois, but their faces light up when I add, “from the Land of Lincoln.” They may be unable to locate my home state on a map, but they have heard of Abraham Lincoln.

February is a fitting time for Presidents’ Day, which commemorates their birthdays on the third Monday of the month, in honor of our first President’s birthday, George Washington.

Abraham Lincoln’s was born February 12th. If Ronald Reagan had lived, he would have turned one hundred on Feb. 6th.

My grandfather, who passed away at age 96, almost made it to the century mark. Even in old age, he never forgot his own birthday. Hard for a guy to forget, when a President of the United States called up every year to remind you.

Coach Mac & President Reagan in the Oval Office - courtesy White House photography

Now what kind of a man – who knew the glamour of Hollywood and the glory of the White House – would remain kind enough to call his old college coach every year to extend well wishes? Reagan played right guard for my grandpa, Coach Mac, at Eureka College from 1928-1932. Though grandpa remembered Reagan for being a better orator than athlete, the relationship forged on a football field at the small private, Christian school in central Illinois lasted a lifetime. “Dutch” Reagan and Coach Mac remained together for every crucial moment of each other’s career.

Reagan delivered my grandfather’s retirement testimonial speech at Northern Illinois University and presented his award at the Washington D.C.Touchdown Club. Coach Mac attended Reagan’s Presidential Inauguration and dined at the White House. When my grandpa under went hip surgery, Reagan’s White House doctors’ consulted with my grandpa’s surgeon.

Whether one agreed with Reagan’s conservative policy or not, history will remember our 40^th President (1981-1989) as a gifted communicator whose vision led to sustained economic growth, an end to the Cold War, and a restoration of the nation’s confidence.

When I look back, I will remember the man from humble beginnings, who grew up a stone’s throw from my hometown, who found it fitting to honor my grandpa, also of modest origins, with a phone call every year.

Put party loyalties and politics aside. And though indebted Illinois has it’s share of problems, I take pride knowing my home state helped shape a few good leaders, from Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, to Ronald Reagan in Eureka, to President Barack Obama in Chicago.

Illinois is a good place to grow up; February is a good month for birthdays.

Celebrating the Rosa Parks in your Neighborhood

[audio:http://pattymackz.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/07-Momma-Hold-My-Hand-11.mp3|titles=Momma Hold My Hand]I teach at an international school with students of over a hundred different nationalities where the notion of racism is non existent, so during Black History Month every February I try to help my students understand how prejudice can pass through generations even in a nation founded on democracy. Though I grew up in small town, USA, at the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, I don’t have a racist bone in my body. I credit that to the two families who taught me that everyone should be treated equal; the white one I was born to, and the black one I adopted through basketball.

Barb Smith was as much a part of the history of my community, as the brick in the foundation of Sterling High School where I lived out my hoop dreams. As an adult, I saw only her once a year at the Smith-Hereford Family July 4th Reunion where I was welcomed home like a long lost child. It was no surprise that she was the catalyst for the event that united family, friends and neighbors, from Alabama to Wallace Street to 11th. She brought people together long before that tradition began.

She never aged. When she wrapped you in a hug, though small built, you felt like you could break in half from the strength of that love. Hardworking. Resilient. Courageous. She was like the Rosa Parks of the Sauk Valley, taking a stand for human justice long before the lawmakers got around to it. At a time when Jim Crow Laws were still deeply ingrained in the social fabric, she chose to remain colorblind, ignoring the dictates of society.

Didn’t matter what side of the tracks you were born on. All people were her people. And nobody went hungry. There was always a spare rib, a plate of greens or a piece a pie left to feed another hungry child.

She had 6 children, 23 grandchildren, 37 great grand children and 8 great great grand children, but it didn’t matter if you were kin folk or not; she knew long before the rest of the country all blood is red and “we all God’s children.”

She was meek but mighty, a tiny woman with an enormous heart. And a smile so big that it could light up the universe.

Any friend of the family was a friend for life. She made everybody feel special. Whenever she knew I would be back in town, she baked me lemon pie. We had a standing joke ever since I first tasted her famous lemon meringue pie as a teen, and announced, “I never tasted no white folk pie that good.”

She laughed and her laugh was infectious. Laughter rings throughout my memory of her.

She had a faith strong enough to move mountains and a love so enduring to withstand generations of hardship and loss. Yet she lived each day as though it were a blessing and loved each soul as though he or she were heaven sent. All who knew her felt gifted.

Although I can still hear her hollering her daughter’s and my sister’s name, the year they won the state basketball championship, she was a cheerleader for all of us. I can still see her smile, feel her hug; I can still taste her love filled lemon meringue, sweet and tart, smooth and creamy.

Though she no longer walks this earth, baking pie and bringing good cheer, she winks down on us in every ray of sunshine and each twinkling star. We know without a doubt, we are better people for having known her. Every time I help a neighbor, encourage a friend, care for a loved one, every time I do the right thing, I remember Mom Smith and stand a bit taller.

in remembrance of Barbara Smith, click on this link to listen to Momma Hold My Hand