Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? Read Free Page A

afraid of situations or be concerned in certain situations, but never fear any person—be they black or white.” And she never showed any fear in terms of dealing with whites. And that was important, because that wasn’t true with a lot of other people that I’ve known.
    Sam Cooper had little tolerance for racism. Shortly after Lewis was born, he thumbed his nose at the firmly entrenched Jim Crow policies of Baltimore by marching into a downtown department store to buy his new grandson a blanket. When he felt like it, he would also “dare” to watch movies in segregated theaters, his self-assurance and fair complexion overcoming any indecision on the part of the cashier who might not be sure if he was white or black.
    Despite some early childhood clashes with his grandfather, Reginald Lewis always looked up to Sam and Sue Cooper, who he always referred to as Grandpop and Grandmom. On his periodic visits to Baltimore, he would invariably make it a point to visit them. Years later, he would confide to friends that one of his proudest moments was when, as a successful tycoon, he was able to take his grandfather to lunch at the elegant Harvard Club in New York. Lewis truly valued the years he lived with the Coopers.
    I behaved and had a knack for being a real boy but one who also respected his elders. Everybody in the Cooper family worked and went to school. We were sort of a first family of the block. My grandmother always had a helping hand for others, whether the need was advice or food.
    The Coopers were also known as a tough family. If you fought one, you had to fight all, including the women. I remember several men getting their heads busted bloody for picking on one of the younger members of our clan. Sometimes injustices were done. Once when I was about 7, my best friend’s brother, who was about 14, knocked me around for no reason. I told my uncle, who rounded up a couple of his henchmen to search out the culprit. Unable to find him, they grabbed his brother—my best friend—and kicked his ass instead. I didn’t have a best friend for a few days, although I did speak out as he got slapped around. My uncles said the guilty brother would get the message. He did.
    Early on, Lewis displayed a talent for sports. He was extraordinarily competitive, and it was important to him to get on the playing field, even if most of the time he was much younger and smaller than the other players.
    Dallas Street also served as an athletic field, where all the boys played a brand of touch football that made tackle seem mild by comparison. We skinned our knees and elbows as a matter of course. For the big games, usually around the end of fall, we’d go to the park with makeshift helmets; some of us had them and some didn’t. There were also second-hand shoulder pads and assorted equipment that left you feeling unbalanced until the first hit. All my friends were about 12 or 13 and sometimes in those games I would not get to play a lot. The boys were afraid I might get hurt, meaning they would have to answer to my uncles and aunts or even disappoint my grandmother, Mrs. Cooper.
    On those occasions when the football in play happened to belong to Lewis and he was on the sidelines, the game was abruptly terminated. If neither team picked him, he would instantly snatch up his ball and leave, oblivious to the angry stares—and comments—of the other children.
    By the time he was seven, Lewis’s mother enrolled him in a nearby Catholic school.
    I went to St. Francis Xavier, a Catholic elementary school about five blocks from Dallas Street. A couple of my younger aunts went there before me and my youngest uncle tried, but was thrown out on his ear for being too advanced. The Oblate Sisters were the teachers, and they were rough. My mother, who had gone to public school, always bragged about her son going to “parochial school. ”
    As I think back on it, the place left a lot to be desired, but the discipline was good and the sports