Marathon

Marathon

The New York Club opened a marathon Thanksgiving Day on November 22 called held in park. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to registration which was held in an elementary school a mile away from park. By the time I got to it was almost 9am and the race was about to begin. The New York

Road Runners event coordinators told me to just run it because it was only a "friendly race" and said when I’m done maybe they can help me out by giving me a Turkey Trot shirt or
I, along with a few of my brothers and neighborhood friends attended summer camp at
school and had to walk roughly 3 miles to get home. The trip took us down a road bordering
a white neighborhood.  I was only 7 but recall vividly the terrifying reality of
racism as 4 men in a white truck chased us, trying to run us down.  My brothers dragged
me like a rag while these men yelled racial slurs.  We found a shortcut and ran through a
patch of woods bordering our own neighborhood.
That was my indoctrination to racism of the white perspective.  Through the 70’s and into
the 80’s my friends and I were chased no less than 5 times by whites in vehicles, I was
knocked off of my bicycle riding home from school, and became a part of a growing number
of black males with an eye toward retaliation.
 My Christian upbringing tempered me.  Many of my contemporaries are jailed to this day.
I spent the better part of my elementary school days adjusting myself  to make myself
more palatable to my own- hey, they were all I had;  and being skeptical of the intentions
of anyone white.  My maturing enough to see the treatment of my mother as I tagged along
while she cleaned white people’s offices and homes, and my father, who worked in a state
job with an illiterate white boss who called him in to read items for him, reinforced this
mentality.  We’re talking 1970’s through early 80’s; not ancient history as some whites
would have you to believe.