(Todd A. Smith)
The entire generation that came of age in the 1960s deserves more props from the Black community as they reach their golden years.
That generation inspired so many future generations and opened so many doors that many of the unsung heroes got lost in the shuffle.
When Michael Jordan became the greatest basketball player of all time, many forgot about how legendary Bob Love was with the Chicago Bulls.
However, in my home I did not have that luxury because my father attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, La. with the man nicknamed, “Butterbean.”
Not only did the young adults and children of the 1960s fight to achieve equality under the law in life.
But that fight extended to the sports arena as well.
Because of their fight, future generations got to enjoy integration, for better or worse.
Integration broke down many barriers for the Black community, but it hurt our community as well because it allowed others to benefit financially from our exploits.
During the 1960s, many predominantly White institutions did not recruit Black players, or only recruited a limited amount of Black talent.
Therefore, many talented student-athletes took their skills to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) like Southern and their rival Grambling State University.
Having talent like Love and the late Willis Reed made HBCUs a breeding ground for future Hall of Famers.
And it created some of the most epic battles in HBCU sports history.
Reed, ashamedly, spoke about how Love’s Southern’s team became the first Jaguars team in recent memory, at that time, to defeat Grambling.
My father still speaks of seeing Love’s exploits in a packed Seymour Hall gymnasium on “The Bluff.”
It was not long before those college battles became battles between Love’s Bulls and Reed’s New York Knicks.
In fact, when the Knicks won championships in the late 1960s, the team was filled with HBCU legends like Dick Barnett of Tennessee State and Earl “The Pearl” Monroe of Winston-Salem State.
Those guys did not have Power Four or Power Five schools rolling out the red carpet, desperate for their collegiate services.
Like the youngsters today say, they had to get it out the mud.
Translation.
They had to make something out of nothing or turn lemons into lemonade.
But because of their struggle and sacrifice, future generations had it much easier.
However, Love deserves more recognition for what he did off the court than what he did as a member of the Southern Jaguars or Chicago Bulls.
Born with a severe speech impediment, Love succeeded in life despite not being able to speak because of a horrible stutter.
Notoriously, he did not do many interviews during his playing career.
And even though he earned a degree in food and nutrition from Southern, Love had to take a job as a restaurant bus boy because of his speech impediment.
Although some graduate college without many skills because they skate by, that was not the case with Love.
He was brilliant academically, even qualifying for the Air Force Academy out of high school.
The only reason he chose Southern over the Air Force Academy was because his grandmother was scared that he would fall out the sky in one of those airplanes.
Unfortunately, his speech condition created a hurdle that many employers did not want to deal with.
To make matters worse, when Love was forced to retire from the Bulls, his lady took all his valuable possessions like All-Star game rings and ran off because she did not think that a cripple could provide the type of life that she had grown accustomed to living.
Therefore, Love had to get it out the mud twice in life.
The first time he had to pull himself up from his bootstraps was because of the caste system that America had created to keep poor Black people down.
The second time he had to pull himself up from his bootstraps was when he lost everything once his playing career ended and he had to take menial jobs to make ends meet.
The most embarrassing thing for him was when fans of the Bulls came to the restaurant and recognized him bussing tables with an apron and hairnet on.
He prayed and prayed for the ability to speak.
And his prayers got answered in the form of a boss who recognized his work ethic.
However, the boss told him he would need to do something about his speech impediment if he wanted to move up in the company.
The boss helped him get speech therapy and the rest was history for Love.
He went on to earn a front office job with the Bulls before becoming a sought-after motivational speaker.
The Bulls would eventually retire his number 10 jersey, hanging it in the rafters of the United Center next to Jordan’s jersey.
His life should remain a motivational story for Black people in this country, especially as many fear our rights will get rolled back in the coming years.
No matter what former generations of Black folk endured, they kept their eye on the prize and that was the uplift of their family and their people.
Regardless of what obstacles they faced, they knew that they had what it took to find ultimate victory in life.
Although time may fade and the powers-that-be may attempt to rewrite history to sanitize the hardships that Black people faced, it is imperative that the Black community keep those stories alive to inspire future generations and making sure future generations do not have to jump the same hurdles that previous generations have already cleared.
