At the end, Eugene didn’t look too much like Eugene. When we got to that point, it was me doing most of the talking. The way I looked at the whole situation, there in that corner room of Grand Strand Hospital with the word QUARANTINE in big letters on the door (they let family in and I was all the family Eugene had), was that Eugene was finally rounding the final curve and entering the straightaway for the final push to the finish, this one decidedly different from the final tuned motorized leg moves of his earlier days.
As he lay there in that hospital bed, entering his final kick, wanting both to be here and to get out (somehow I could tell) with just a few yards left in his race, I could almost see this champion dasher mentally timing his moves again, getting ready to meet the challenge of what was coming up on his shoulder, what was trying to box him in, what was trying to get ahead of him and lead him on to the finish line for the final victory.
That race was even more of a struggle for him than the 400 had been for him. It was the biggest race of his life. And, for certain, this time it was clear that Eugene was experiencing a different kind of pain than what he had experienced on the track.
I’m just remembering him here. We should remember those whom we’ve lost. I’m remembering a strong man, a kind man, a real man. In many ways Eugene was a king. Most of us don’t know about the black kings, however, even while they are in our midst. They should learn. Maybe take a stroll around Race Path, maybe down Neighbor Lane at night to remind us of what our society has allowed, to make us more militant. You know, do a little outreach in this work we Americans don’t know about, Maybe we should think about fixing things, honoring our neighbors, uplifting ourselves in the process, and being a part of the new change, the New Change that is here to obliterate the Big Lie.
So what’s the thought, Ben? What’s the object lesson here? Do you want to preach? No, that’s not necessary. Not with MLK and Medgar and Malcolm and Angela and James B. and Shirley and the rest having done a pretty good job of that when the fomenting began. I once wrote a big list of those heroes in an article here years and year ago.
For me, this discussion is simple: when he was a youth at Myrtle Beach High School, for a little less than a minute once or twice a week, Eugene Williams was a champion. And then later as a coach he was a champion. He made sure his athletes were ready for anything. He thought like a champion, he coached like a champion and he spoke like a champion, because he was a champion.
Eugene’s posture when he was in his 30’s (almost an advanced age for residents of Neighbor Lane), was exemplary, admirable, strong and proud. Standing by me on the track in workouts, and in meets, he stood with his shoulders back and his head high in the same way that he ran: with pride. There was always joy in Eugene’s face during a big meet.
I would submit this story to anybody in our country who wants to destroy American Public High Schools: the blackness and brownness of them. I would submit this story to anyone who has been a teacher. I would submit this story to anyone who mistakenly still thinks that black lives are mainly about shutting up and dribbling.
I had seen enough racism for one lifetime, but then the George Floyd murder happened. Mark my words, when you are retired from language teaching, you will not reflect back on the wonderful privileged kids who won all the academic awards, those few kids, those privileged kids. As we make the real change now finally, after failing to get to it for four centuries, your mind as an educator will go more quickly straight to the core problem of our society, and you will think about your teaching in a different light.
You will look back and wish that you had plunged into the Black Lives Matter movement more, sooner, with more energy, and you will wish that you had gotten more kids of color into your language classes, even if the counselors told you that they didn’t have the “academics” to succeed in a language class. You will erupt at such ignorance and insist that you get more kids of color into your classes, yelling out to the world that learning a language has nothing to do with academics. You will analyze how you maybe could have examined your language instruction to include more Eugenes. You will try to change things by how you teach.
Or would you end your career with an asterisk*?
*This language teacher had a great career, but missed the point of the Black Lives Matter movement, having gotten used to teaching only the few privileged kids in the school, the ones who sat on the school board, the ones whose children “mattered”. The one who never paid any attention to James Baldwin and all the other the great Black social activist writers.
If you buy into that old way of thinking and push the lie that most language teachers perpetuate, even to this day, you will have to hang your head down. It is because you taught in the post-George Floyd era, but didn’t alter your teaching to include all the kids in the school. Because you knew better, but didn’t want to do that kind of unique internal self-reflection and gut-wrenching change that being a language teacher in this unique year requires. If you are to answer the BLM call – a call that is uniquely American and uniquely patriotic – if you wish to teach in a new way that is based on community and includes everyone, then God bless you.
We will pull together, America, now under the united American and BLM flags. Let’s do it for Eugene. and for all those other kids of color who never got the kind of attention and appreciation that the sons and daughters of Myrtle Beach’s elite hotel and restaurant owners got from their teachers.
Picture it: children of color laughing in our CI classes with their white classmates, forging relationships that won’t crumble in adulthood, rocking the language game, through all four years of their tenure with you. It’s a start!
(FIN)