A Life Constructed. Delon Hampton
it and other surrounding developments were well on their way.
My friends eventually could be defined by the two groups they hung out with: the “squares” and the “junkies.” Some of my friends became involved in drugs and ended up joining the junkies, but my closest friends and I were content being squares. Usually there wasn’t any tension between the two groups; that’s just the way our world worked. Except for some friendly competition on the basketball court or on the football field, the squares and the junkies coexisted most of the time with no problems and no indifference to each other.
That wasn’t always the case, however. The older I got, the rougher it got. One night, my friends and I were hanging out in front of the corner store in our neighborhood, just down from the old streetcar barn. We were minding our own business, talking about girls or sports or whatever was the most important topic of the day. Across the street we saw a group of guys we knew were in a gang. They started walking toward us. We didn’t think anything of it—as mentioned, that’s the way our world worked. Then we heard shots ring out. When we realized it was us they were shooting at, we ran like hell. They started chasing, and at that point it was every guy for himself, and God help us all. As I ran, I heard more shooting behind me. I have no idea if they were firing at me or at somebody else or just shooting into the air. I was too scared and too focused on getting away to turn back for a look.
On another night, on another street corner, another friend of mine with whom I used to play football and basketball wasn’t as lucky. He too was standing there minding his own business when the shooting started. He went down, hit by a bullet right in the face. He lost an eye forever.
By the time I was in grammar school our neighborhood was surrounded by gangs. Avoiding them became a way of life. We traveled in groups and we took care of our own whenever we went to school or anyplace else. When we didn’t have anybody to watch our back, we had to sneak through the back alleys with hopes that we wouldn’t encounter any gangs. Even when you had somebody else with you, it could be unsafe. One night, my friend Delaney and I were hanging out when a group of boys from another neighborhood came across us. They started calling us names and pushing us around. Then the fists started flying. Delaney and I fought back, and we got away. But as we nursed our bruises, bumps, and cuts in the silence after the fight, we both knew our lives and our neighborhood were changing.
My mother was usually oblivious to anything that happened after I left home and shut the door behind me. But she also had an uncanny knack for keeping me safe. Each time my friends got into serious trouble or got hurt, she kept me out of harm’s way by keeping me home. “Toots,” she would say, using her pet name for me, “you’ve been runnin’ too much. Stay home tonight.” Though my mother didn’t know about what happened outside of our home, and though she gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted most of the time, I am sure it was my fear of hurting her—and facing her wrath—that kept me out of gangs and set me on the path I would take in life. My mother was a wonderful woman who loved to laugh and joke and have a good time. But when it came to raising me and keeping me on the straight and narrow, she did not play.
Despite being raised by two people who never got to high school, school to me was easy and enjoyable—so easy, in fact that I often found myself pulled into the principal’s office for talking and misbehaving in class. Occasionally my mother had to come to a meeting with my teachers and/or my principal. My most dreaded task was to have to go home and tell my mother she had to take a day off from work to attend a meeting at school. We were always strapped for cash and this meant she had to lose a day’s pay. Depending on what I did, it could also mean a whipping. My father, Uless Hampton, whipped me only once. My mother observed this whipping and felt it was too severe. Consequently, she forbade him to whip me ever again and assumed that responsibility herself. She was very good at it.
Fortunately for me, the assistant principal at Oakland Elementary School, Mrs. Jackson, saw something good in me and protected me at critical times. They say it only takes one teacher to change a child’s future. For me, it was Mrs. Jackson. Once I was hauled into principal’s office for bad behavior and was to be sent to one of the city of Chicago’s schools for incorrigible boys. Mrs. Jackson saved me from that fate. If I had been sent to Mosley Elementary School, my future might have been very different. Instead, I finished Oakland Elementary at the age of twelve. The principal decided that our class had caused too many disciplinary problems during our tenure so he would not allow us to have a graduation ceremony. They handed us our diplomas and sent us home. The next school day (I graduated mid-year) I headed for Wendell Phillips High School.
I was at Wendell Phillips for all of one academic year, during which I concluded without a doubt that I was wasting my time there. I wasn’t learning anything, and as a result I had no good reason to go. By the end of my first semester I had cut class more than thirty times. Even so, I passed everything, and my mother, to the best of my knowledge, was never informed of my cuts. Furthermore, my absences had not precipitated any action or comments from teachers, nor administrators.
By then, I had begun to set some goals for my life. I had watched how tough of a time my mother had, and I wanted to have a better life and the opportunity to help her. Even though I hardly knew anybody who had gone to college, I knew that I had to go. I defined my goals even further than that. I decided that I wanted to finish high school by the age of sixteen, to finish college by the age of twenty, to get a PhD by the age of twenty-two, and earn $10,000 a year. Since I prepared my mother’s income tax returns, I knew she never grossed as much as $6,000 a year, thus a year’s earnings of $10,000 represented a lot of money.
To do this, though, I knew the first thing I had to do was to get out of Wendell Phillips High School. I found a way to do that with the help of my uncle and aunt. Uncle Man and Aunt Alma had recently moved further south in Chicago. I decided that going to high school in their school district offered a much better path to a good education and to fulfilling my personal goals. Therefore, during my second semester at Wendell Phillips, I finagled my way into a transfer to Englewood High School using my aunt and uncle’s address.
It took me more than an hour and two streetcars each way to get to and from Englewood High School. It was a long way, especially on days when it snowed. Yet moving to Englewood was a major milestone in my life, and one of the keys to my future success. I made friends quickly there, and by the start of my sophomore year, I was a member of the student body. I was on the school’s track team (I ran the hurdles, low and high, and sprints, and participated in the shot put and long jump). I swam the breaststroke on the swim team. And I played football.
Our football team was lousy, but we had fun. It was lousy not because we had poor players but, principally, because we had a lousy coach. He taught us nothing of value while, at the same time, making extra money by pretending to be our coach. We generally won only one game a season—against Hyde Park High School. Nevertheless, our team bonded, we played the best we could, and we enjoyed our time together.
My teammates became some of my best friends. Ray Harden and Ed Fleming were two of the closest, and we were inseparable. Ray’s parents had invested in real estate and were well off. Even in high school, Ray had a car and we got around quite a bit. Ed and I were the poor guys but Ray never flaunted his financial advantage. My other close friends included Earl “Turk” Doty and Donald “Doc” Greenlee.
Uncle Man and Aunt Alma’s sons, Raymond and Junior (Burnette Lewis Jr.), also went to Englewood, but we were never very close so we had little contact during our high school careers. We developed different sets of friends and values and consequently operated in different social circles.
I did not do much dating in high school. I lacked the confidence that I was attractive to girls. I was not a good conversationalist, and I did not dress well. Nevertheless, my heart belonged to Tina Hill. She was petite, beautiful, and everything I thought I wanted in a woman. I was too much in awe of her, however, to ever make any advances. I was kind of her lap dog. I became friends with her family but I do not recall ever asking for a date, although she often invited me to her home. As a result, her sisters, Shirley and Sylvia, and I became and are still very good friends. Even to this day I periodically visit them and their families in San Diego. Those visits are a lot of fun. Tina has become a recluse, but her sisters and their families are as lively and as vivacious as ever.