My People Are Rising. Aaron Dixon
guitarist in history, and which Bruce Lee had adopted as his own. Though not an alum, Lee had developed an attachment to Garfield, with its wonderful mix of Black and Asian and white students. He lived in Seattle for several years and often came by to greet some of his martial arts students or simply to hang out.
Garfield’s student body was mostly Black and the rest a mix of Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, and whites. The staff was well-blended, with whites, Blacks, and a few Asians. In many ways it was the ideal school for the ’60s—a place where no matter your color or beliefs, you could feel free to express yourself. Here were the best musicians, the best athletes, some of the city’s best teachers, the best example of racial harmony, and a rich tradition of openness. It was here at Garfield that my identity had an opportunity to grow and flourish. I could explore and search, discover who I was and why I was here on this earth. I found a new circle of friends, and over the next couple of years we played sports together, got drunk together, and philosophized about our future and the world.
At Garfield, there were old-school teachers and new-style, “hip” teachers. The old-school teachers, some of whom carried paddles, went around intimidating students. The new style was embodied by Mr. Peoples, the young, white, sharply dressed math teacher and track coach who was much better at teaching us about social development and dressing well than teaching math. He was very well-liked by the students and was able to set a good example for us young guys because he acted like one of us. On the other end of the spectrum was Mrs. Hundley, a tall, light-skinned Black woman who never smiled. The word was out that she did not take any mess. There was no idle chatter or laughter in her class. She got the most out of you, whether you wanted to give it or not. A throwback to the old days when Black folks relied on their own initiative, understanding that hard work paid off, she was easily the best teacher I ever had. We read the classics and through her I learned the love of literature.
Mrs. Woodson, the tall, Black, rail-thin student counselor, called me into her office one day during my senior year. I had been skipping a lot and getting into some trouble—for example, being kicked out of art class for starting a clay fight—and being sent to study hall far too often. Mrs. Woodson had never said much to me. But what she said that day angered me and woke me up.
She said, “Aaron, you are not going to college. You are just not college material.”
Those words stuck in my mind like lead. Mommy and Poppy had always told us we were going to college. I guess I had just assumed that I would go. But my GPA at that point was a pitiful 2.0, not high enough for me to be accepted into college.
Not only was my GPA merely average, but I was also short on credits, meaning that if I failed or dropped even one class, I would not graduate. I knew that Mommy and Poppy would not be pleased with that. But it was the words of Mrs. Woodson that burned inside my head. I realized I had to buckle down, and the remainder of the year I did. I still worked at Swedish and had fun with my friends, but I made sure my studies were taken care of. Even so, I still did not put in a lot of time on homework, doing most of it during school so it would not interfere with those long hours up at the Madrona basketball and tennis courts.
Besides hanging out with my friends, sports were the most important activities in my life. By now, football had taken a back seat to basketball and tennis. Every warm day during the school year, the ballplayers congregated up at Madrona Park. College players from Seattle University, high school players for Garfield and Franklin, varsity rejects like me and my buddies Mike Dean and Chester and Michael Childs, we were all there, waiting for an opportunity to get on the court and show our skills, waiting for winners, sweating, pushing, shoving, jumping, scoring, rebounding—and sometimes fighting. I had become known for my rebounding, my fearlessness beneath the boards, and my tenacious defense against older and bigger opponents. Sometimes we were out playing until sunset. Some of the guys even stayed out way past nightfall. I remember lying in bed, hearing the sound of the leather ball bouncing on the concrete, and wondering who was still out on the court. Sports had become an increasingly important focus for me at this time. They gave me a sense of purpose; I could direct all my energy onto the basketball court, the tennis court, or the football field. I was fearless when playing sports—it was the one area where I had almost complete control and a healthy confidence in my abilities. But there were other, more important things on the horizon for which my skills would prove to be best suited.
Something was brewing in America, something that had begun hundreds of years earlier when Black slaves were brought to the shores of the New World. It was something unavoidable, something that could no longer be held down. The Civil Rights Movement of the ’50s had ushered in the beginning of the end of segregation and outright racial discrimination. And it was my generation—not only young Blacks, but also young whites and other young people of color—who sat at home watching the shaky black-and-white television images, steadied by rabbit-ear antennas, of Southern Blacks integrating universities, schools, buses, restaurants, movie theaters: establishments and institutions that had failed to recognize Blacks as equal human beings. These images penetrated our young minds, informing our visions of our future.
The ’60s had begun with one of the most unsettling events in US history, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Kennedy, the first Irish Catholic president, embodied possibility and hope, a break with the conservative ’50s and President Eisenhower. To many Black people, Kennedy represented an opening, a ray of light on a dark, ugly past. Many felt that at last there was someone in the White House who understood us, who cared about us, who spoke with his own words and not those of the power- and money-hungry moguls that infested the political scene. We had been lied to for so long. Finally, we thought we would get the truth.
But Camelot was short-lived. On November 22, 1963, thousands of Americans gathered in starched dresses and pressed slacks and ties to watch their beloved president’s car pass by in Dallas. Millions of other Americans were watching the parade on TV in their homes. Suddenly Kennedy slumped over onto his wife’s lap with blood gushing from a bullet wound to his throat. Americans were in shock, stunned as they witnessed their president being shot in front of them, out in the open, in broad daylight. It was a heavy, terrible day. Like most of my peers, I was too young to comprehend the events that happened before our eyes, but our parents’ sorrow and despair was transferred to us. It was the first and only time I saw Poppy cry, crying in anger, throwing chairs, books, barely able to hold himself up under the strain and sorrow.
Little did we know that 1963 marked only the beginning of a very violent decade. Earlier that same year, Medgar Evers was assassinated. Evers was as important to the Civil Rights Movement as Martin Luther King Jr. and had become familiar to every Black home in America. His leadership and tenacity would never be with us again. In 1966, the most feared Black man in America was assassinated: Malcolm X, tall, persuasive, sharp, strong, fearless, a brilliant man many of us had not even had the opportunity to know. It was only afterward that we realized we’d had a genuine diamond in our midst, an authentic Black American hero who could have helped shape a positive future for this country.
A year earlier, in 1965, white policemen in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles stopped and arrested a Black motorist, Marquette Frye, on suspicion of driving under the influence and proceeded to beat him violently as well as his mother, who lived nearby and tried to intervene. It was also rumored that, in the preceding days, the Watts police had roughed up a pregnant Black woman. These events ignited the first of many violent riots to rock the nation. The Watts Uprising woke up America. Blacks rioted for five days, burning down establishments that had exploited Black people far too long, sniping at racist cops, rampaging through the streets, liberating TVs, clothes, food, and guns, throwing Molotov cocktails, leaving behind a wasteland.
Thousands of miles away, young Americans were being sent to hostile, hot jungles, armed with M-14s, trained to kill Vietnamese men and women because they dared to fight for the unification of their country. Older boys I had grown up with were now absent from the neighborhood, no longer on the basketball court or the football field but in the trenches, muddy, bloody, and slowly becoming bloodthirsty for an enemy they did not know. Many would never return.
I managed to stay disconnected from all the chaos, yet it was slowly seeping into my subconscious. In other parts of the country, new Black organizations were sprouting up. Black Nationalism, which rejected