Stories from My Own Personal Racial History by John R. Thornton

1. Mimi Broadus

When I was little, there was an older black woman who spent almost as much time with us Thornton kids as our parents did. Her name was Mimi Broadus and she had been working for my mother’s family since the 1930’s. Mimi was so loving to us and so wise, we couldn’t help loving her back. She taught us so many lessons about how to be a good person in this world, lessons I am ashamed to say I haven’t always followed. Mimi was the kindest person I have ever known.

When I was around four, I heard my mother use the expression “colored person”. I asked her what a colored person was. Immediately, I thought about this record album my mother had of Louie Armstrong. The portrait of Louie was done with all the brilliant colors of the rainbow and I got extremely excited over the notion that such people actually existed. When my mother replied, “You know, like Mimi”, I remember being kind of disappointed. Years later I learned that Louis Armstrong hated being called “Louie”.

About a year ago, I heard a story on NPR about the conflict that a black nanny felt in terms of her own kids and the white kids she took care of. Listening to that story made me feel ashamed that my love for Mimi was somehow a form of theft.

In 1975, when my twin brother and I were in our early 20’s, Mimi’s family moved from Pennsylvania to Los Angeles. My brother visited them out there. He had seen all these grafittis of something like "CribDeath". Jimmy, an 8 year old, told my brother, "That's not 'Crib' it's 'Crip'. They're a bad gang." Mimi’s nephew Noel was an LAPD policeman. He warned my brother that if he was driving in their neighborhood and he hit a black kid with his car, he shouldn’t stop but keep on going. Noel said there was this new gang called the “Crips” and they would stage these fake accidents and once the driver got out of his car, they would cripple him. This was their gang initiation rite.

My thinking is that sharing the stories of individuals concerning their relations with members of different racial groups may be one way of approaching the truth. These stories cannot be simply platitudes about the brotherhood of man. Our history deserves whatever honesty we can muster, the good, the bad and the ugly.

2. Crime Stories, the Latvian for “Black people”

In the late 1970’s, I attended art school in Philadelphia. My roommate Edgar was a gifted teenager of Latvian heritage from Omaha. On his birthday, he got a new 10 speed bike. As he was riding it back to our apartment, he was set upon by a group of young black kids. They forced him at gunpoint into the foyer of our appointment. The kid with the gun was extremely agitated. As he pointed the gun at Edgar’s chest, he kept asking his friends, “Should I do it? Should I do it?” Finally, the kids took Edgar’s bike and left without killing him, but Edgar became pretty racist after that. He started using the Latvian translation for “black people” as his own private “N word”. “Malnice tsilvekia”. I used to say it too.

One Sunday night a week before Christmas in 1994, my wife Nancy and I had just left a party and were walking back to our car when three black males slowly rode their bikes past us. One asked me the time. Nancy and I felt an almost crippling fear, like mice in a python cage. The three rode off, but in less than 30 seconds, one had run up and grabbed me. He had a gun. We were on 20th Street in Philadelphia. When I told him I didn’t even have my wallet, he tried to get me to go with him down an alley. I had seen a show on PBS once in which a Chicago cop said that if you are ever a victim of a crime, don’t let them take you to a secluded place. Knowing I might be killed, I didn’t move. Nancy gave the other 2 guys her purse and then the three of them vanished. Later, at the precinct, we saw more mug shots of black men than I thought could exist in the whole world.

I have a close relative and an artist friend who were raped by black guys.

Malnice tsilvekia.

3. Gordon and Kenley

Perhaps my greatest vanity is my sense that I am “smart”. I am an artist with a math degree, and for several years have designed software using Macromedia Director and its language Lingo. None of this would have been possible if it were not for a black student of mine named Gordon Jones who figured out how to use trigonometric functions within the programming code to create unique animation paths. Thanks to Gordon’s help, the best creative work of my life became possible.

But still, there was one aspect of the programming language I could never figure out. I was teaching a class in Director and one of my students was this young black guy named Kenley. After using Director for all of 4 weeks, Kenley figured out this thing that eluded me for 6 years. Seeing the breadth of Kenley’s intelligence made me feel somehow like a member of a lower species. Do I still think I am smart? Yes, but not nearly as smart as either Gordon or Kenley.

4. A Black Elvis Impersonator

I used to teach basic math at my art school. Rather than make my students buy a book, I created a 20 page handout that I would Xerox and distribute to the class. Students would chronically lose these handouts and ask for another, so I would dutifully march off to the copy center and make new ones. After about a year of this, I wised up and on the day I handed them out, announced, “Don’t lose these things. If you do, I will rent you one for $.50 a day or sell you one for $3.00.” The rate of students’ losing of my math booklets immediately fell drastically.

One of my students was a black guy whose claim to fame was appearing on Steve Harvey’s show as a Black Elvis impersonator. He was amazingly good at it, but not so hot as a math student. A few weeks after my announcement, I was summoned to the office of the President of my art school. “What is this about you selling syllabi, Thornton, this is in violation of State law and one of your students is threatening to sue!!!” I explained that it was not a syllabus but a handout, but that I would stop my new policy. I later told my class that if they lost it, it was on them to borrow a copy and Xerox it. I would give them the one copy and then I was done. It turned out that the wife of Black Elvis had a history of enrolling her husband in schools and then suing them for whatever she could think up.

5. Bacari, Josh, and Owen, the Times are a’ Changin

Is it possible that the constant awareness of racial difference, so embedded in the psyches of my generation, is slowly going away? I am 55 and I look at the kids in my life and see a lot of hope as far as racial issues go. Friendship between kids seems to often transcend race. My nephews live in another state from me and for years would talk about their friends Bacari and Josh. I had no idea that they were black until I met them. When my father died, I was devastated. The only kid outside the family who talked to me about it was a nine year old black kid. Josh came up to me, looked me in the eye, shook my hand and said, “I am really sorry about your Dad.” Later, Josh’s mom died unexpectedly. She was a single mother and Josh and his brother had to move to another state. I never got a chance to talk to him.

My granddaughter Emma for years would sing the praises about this wonderful kid named Owen. Not knowing him, I used to make up stories about Emma and a magical seagull named Owen. For some reason, I pictured Owen as a blue-eyed little guy with curly blond hair. When I met him, I saw that he was African American, literally, his father was American and his mother was from Kenya.

6. My Black Friend? Free Willy the musical

I don’t have that many friends to begin with, much less black ones. But I do have a guy at work who I really like a lot named Willy Moore. Willy is a gifted animator and ex college football star. Are we “friends”? I would like to think we are, although my morbid self-absorption is a trait that turns Willy off a bit. In the early days of our friendship I proposed the idea of making a musical based on the “Free Willy” movies. I would produce and direct, Willy would star. He would wear a costume of a giant killer whale who craved freedom. The idea still has a ways to go. Meanwhile, I will try to cultivate this relationship more assiduously.

7. My Black Art Mentors

I got interested in art while majoring in math at UNC. After graduating, I started doing art on my own and sneaking it into show to whatever art professor I could find. One day there was a new prof in the UNC studios who was black. His name was Moe Brooker. He ended up mentoring me, giving me a huge amount of encouragement, and really changing the course of my life. When I decided to apply to art school, Moe told me about his alma mater, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and helped me apply and get accepted. I remember my first day at the Academy. There was a naked model and my attempts to draw her were excruciatingly inept, especially compared to my fellow students, who all seemed like geniuses to me. I remember angrily calling Moe. “What have you gotten me into! I shouldn’t be here, I am terrible at this, all the other students are great! I am mortified!” Moe let me rant for a while and then replied, very calmly. “First of all, if you already knew how to do this, there wouldn’t be any reason to go to school. Secondly, those other students are not any good either. John, you got to grow up, check your ego at the door, and try to learn.” Well that immediately put me in my place. I shut up and followed his advice completely. My days at the Academy went on to be the best educational experience of my life. Moe Brooker is a great artist and a superb teacher in that he can bring out the best in his students.

Recently, I have come upon the work of the young black artist Kara Walker, recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” grant. Her art is so intellectually, emotionally, and morally challenging that I feel I will be thinking about it for years to come. This particular project is a result of ideas I have had since first seeing her work “My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love”.

Are there other stories I could tell? Like listening to the Gullah singers at Sea Island “Plantation Suppers” back in the early 60’s, glimpsing a way of life and a soul that was utterly foreign to that of the madras coat wearing, Scotch guzzling corporate class of my parents. Yup, and I think that everyone else has their stories too. I may just have to see if I can scrounge some up…. Back to JRTART.COM Back to Racy Stories