COLUMN: Father Knows Best

From O.J. Lima's "Blues for Mr. Charlie," Fall '93 He's the wisest man I've ever met, and I don't say that because he's my father. I always enjoyed hearing of his experiences. As a 65 year-old black man, he often provided a personal reflection on social circumstances which my school system had tried to leave out of my education. Of all of his stories, my favorite was an army story, about Holsey Collins. He was a carrot-top black man from Stamford, Connecticut. He and my father were in the same battalion along with all of the other black men who were stationed on his base. When my father was in the service, there was no integration for roughly the same reason there is controversy today concerning gays in the military: someone was afraid they'd mess up the status quo. In any event, they became good friends because they played baseball together in the service. They were part of what was known as the base's "colored team." The story goes that there was a group of white ball players who were going on to play in the major league after they finished their terms in the service. During their stay however, they needed someone to "practice on," so they asked the "coloreds" to get a team together. So my father, Holsey, and several other black men organized themselves and formed a team. When the game was over, and all was said and done, the white team had been slaughtered. Most notably, Holsey Collins had hit two homeruns, a triple, and a double off of a fellow, whom my father informed me, became a prominant pitcher in the late 40's and early 50's. When I asked my father why this Holsey Collins never played in the pros, he just laughed. "Blacks couldn't play in the major league back then. He was before his time. Even though he played in the Negro leagues for a while, he never received the recognition his talent deserved. It wasn't until 1947, when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson, that black baseball players were allowed to play in the formerly all-white major league." My Dad tends to be a little long-winded. Then my father chuckled, "But we sure loved to whip those white boys' asses when we had the chance." It always captivated me to hear these stories of my father, his friends, and their encounters with racial politics. Being a black man in America, he was always the underdog, but somehow he always managed to end up all right. When my father retold this story this summer, I couldn't help but re-evaluate the circumstances of discrimination which had both created, but more noticeably veiled, all of this talent, skill and intellect from the rest of society. When I think of creation I envison black men like Dr. Howard Mitchell the chair of the Management department in Wharton who was the first black tennured professor in the Ivy League. He is a man who pushed himself against seemingly insurmountable odds to be four times as qualified as the next white man just so he could compete for the same jobs. And even though his expertise in management has become world renown, there aren't more than a handfull of Howard Mitchell's in this world. Unfortunately, much more has been lost than gained from discrimination in this country. For every Mitchell, who was spurred on by bigotry, there are countless black men who could not withstand its destructive power. Then there are black men like my father who have worked every job from cook to longshoreman. College wasn't an option for the vast majority of black men who graduated from high school in the 1940s so they had to be creative and versatile if they wanted to survive economically. Black men like my father, for example, who were bilingual, had knowledge in countless fields of expertise, and gave 120 percent effort, never received the opportunities for which they were qualified. My father pulled his weight in our society as a firefighter for 29 years. He worked jobs which most men could not. On the weekdays, he saved lives. And when the weekends arrived, he was doing hard labor while the fathers of all of my white, private school friends were lounging at the Agawom Golf Club. I consider him a scholar of the politics of survival. Yet the tomes of knowledge stored in his head may never be fully utilized – an intellectual who could trade blows with some of this University's prominant "geniuses." But Sidney A. Lima will never be offered tenure, nor will he ever be invited to speak at Commencement because circumstances in this society will only permit so many Dr. Howard Mitchell's no matter how wise my father is. And who really looses from all of this? Well, I don't because I value what my father shares with me; but you may. That is, if you came to an institution like Penn convinced that the most valuable knowledge to be pursued is harbored between 33rd and 38th Streets. But I get short changed as well, because I realize there are many black sages whose wisdom will never have a university platform. Now I'm not going to whine like the disheartened black activist. I don't want your daughters or my 40 acres and a mule. I want education. So what do we do, since black men over the age of 60, who posses wisdom like my father, aren't going to be offered a professorship? Well, I keep logs of everything my father tells me and hopefully those in a similar position will do the same because talent and intellect like that shouldn't be forgotten. A lot of games were played and a lot of home runs were hit, but history books don't record what happened outside the stadium. O.J. Lima is a senior English major from Providence, Rhode Island. Blues for Mr. Charlie appears alternate Mondays.