For starters, this was an era that seemed to measure the quality of a male coach by how much he yelled the more, the better. I took that to heart and could tell she was serious by the tone of her voice, but my primary focus was (always) the two-part question of “Where are we eating?” and “Do they have banana pudding?” Also, meeting an important Black elder was part of growing up in Black Atlanta-the trailblazers were everywhere.īut there was something different about Coach. Leaving my first practice with my new team, I sat in the car and listened as my mother explained that Coach Al-Amin was a trailblazer of a Black man. The location was Adams Park, in a gym on the southwest side of Atlanta. He signed the letter “Coach.” It was the only thing I knew him by, as a 9-year-old, in 1996, staring up at his sinewy 6 ft. I am enclosing a piece from my book I’m working on, called Holy-Cost … give it a critical reading, and let me know what you think …Īt this point in the letter, his note took a more personal turn.
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