Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (5 page)

Slowly the realization came that I was getting better in all my school subjects. I began looking forward to my trips to the library. The staff there got to know Curtis and me, offering suggestions on what we might like to read. They would inform us about new books as they came in. I thrived on this new way of life, and soon my interests widened to include books on adventure and scientific discoveries.

By reading so much, my vocabulary automatically improved along with my comprehension. Soon I became the best student in math when we did story problems.

Up until the last few weeks of fifth grade, aside from math quizzes, our weekly spelling bees were the worst part of school for me. I usually went down on the first word. But now, 30 years later, I still remember the word that really got me interested in learning how to spell.

The last week of fifth grade we had a long spelling bee in which Mrs. Williamson made us go through every spelling word we were supposed to have learned that year. As everyone expected, Bobby Farmer won the spelling bee. But to my surprise, the final word he spelled correctly to win was agriculture.

I can spell that word
, I thought with excitement. I had learned it just the day before from my library book. As the winner sat down, a thrill swept through me—a yearning to achieve—more powerful than ever before. “I can spell agriculture,” I said to myself, “and I'll bet I can learn to spell any other word in the world. I'll bet I could learn to spell better than Bobby.”

Learning to spell better than Bobby Farmer really challenged me. Bobby was clearly the smartest boy in the fifth grade. Another kid named Steve Kormos had earned the reputation as being the smartest kid before Bobby Farmer came along. Bobby Farmer impressed me during a history class because the teacher mentioned flax, and none of us knew what she was talking about.

Then Bobby, still new in school, raised his hand and explained to the rest of us about flax—how and where it was grown, and how the women spun the fibers into linen. As I listened, I thought,
Bobby sure knows a lot about flax. He's really smart
. Suddenly, sitting there in the classroom with spring sunshine slanting through the windows, a new thought flashed through my mind.
I can learn about flax or any subject through reading. It is like Mother says—if you can read, you can learn just about anything
. I kept reading all through the summer, and by the time I began sixth grade I had learned to spell a lot of words without conscious memorization. In the sixth grade, Bobby was still the smartest boy in the class, but I was starting to gain ground on him.

After I started pulling ahead in school, the desire to be smart grew stronger and stronger. One day I thought,
It must be a lot of fun for everybody to know you're the smartest kid in the class
. That's the day I decided that the only way to know for sure how that would feel was to become the smartest.

As I continued to read, my spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension improved, and my classes became much more interesting. I improved so much that by the time I entered seventh grade at Wilson Junior High, I was at the top of the class.

But just making it to the top of the class wasn't my real goal. By then, that wasn't good enough for me. That's where Mother's constant influence made the difference. I didn't work hard to compete and to be better than the other kids as much as I wanted to be the very best I could be—for me.

Most of the kids who had gone to school with me in fifth and sixth grade also moved on to Wilson. Yet our relationships had drastically changed during that two-year period. The very kids who once teased me about being a dummy started coming up to me, asking, “Hey, Bennie, how do you solve this problem?”

Obviously I beamed when I gave them the answer. They respected me now because I had earned their respect. It was fun to get good grades, to learn more, to know more than was actually required.

Wilson Junior High was still predominantly White, but both Curtis and I became outstanding students there. It was at Wilson that I first excelled among White kids. Although not a conscious thing on my part, I like to look back and think that my intellectual growth helped to erase the stereotypical idea of Blacks being intellectually inferior.

Again, I have my mother to thank for my attitude. All through my growing up, I never recall hearing her say things such as “White people are just …” This uneducated woman, married at 13, had been smart enough to figure out things for herself and to emphasize to Curtis and me that people are people. She never gave vent to racial prejudice and wouldn't let us do it either.

Curtis and I encountered prejudice, and we could have gotten caught up in it, especially in those days—the early 1960s.

Three incidents of racial prejudice directed against us stand out in my memory.

First, when I started going to Wilson Junior High, Curtis and I often hopped a train to get to school. We had fun doing that because the tracks ran parallel to our school route. While we knew we weren't supposed to hop trains, I placated my conscience by deciding to get on only the slower trains.

My brother would grab on to the fast-moving trains which had to slow down at the crossing. I envied Curtis as I watched him in action. When the faster trains came through, just past the crossing he would throw his clarinet on one of the flat cars near the front of the train. Then he'd wait and catch the last flat car. If he didn't get on and make his way to the front, he knew he'd lose his clarinet. Curtis never lost his musical instrument.

We chose a dangerous adventure, and every time we jumped on a train my body tingled with excitement. We not only had to jump and catch a car railing and hold on, but we had to make sure the railroad security men never caught us. They watched for kids and hoboes who hopped the trains at crossroads. They never did catch us.

We stopped hopping trains for an entirely different reason. One day when Curtis wasn't with me, as I ran along the tracks, a group of older boys—all White—came marching toward me, anger written on their faces. One of them carried a big stick.

“Hey, you! Nigger boy!”

I stopped and stared, frightened and silent. I've always been extremely thin and must have looked terribly defenseless—and I was. The boy with the stick whacked me across the shoulder. I recoiled, not sure what would happen next. He and the other boys stood in front of me and called me every dirty name they could think of.

My heart pounded in my ears, and sweat poured down my sides. I looked down at my feet, too scared to answer, too frightened to run.

“You know you nigger kids ain't supposed to be going to Wilson Junior High. If we ever catch you again, we're going to kill you.” His pale eyes were cold as death. “You understand that?”

My gaze never left the ground. “Guess so,” I muttered.

“I said, ‘Do you understand me, nigger boy?’” the big boy prodded.

Fear choked me. I tried to speak louder. “Yes.”

“Then you get out of here as fast as you can run. And you'd better be keeping an eye out for us. Next time, we're going to kill you!”

I ran then, as fast as I could, and didn't slow down until I reached the schoolyard. I stopped using that route and went another way. From then on I never hopped another train, and I never saw the gang again.

Certain that my mother would have yanked us out of school right away, I never told her about the incident.

A second, more shocking episode occurred when I was in the eighth grade. At the end of each school year the principal and teachers handed out certificates to the one student who had the highest academic achievement in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades respectively. I won the certificate in the seventh grade, and that same year Curtis won for the ninth grade. By the end of eighth grade, people had pretty much come to accept the fact that I was a smart kid. I won the certificate again the following year. At the all-school assembly one of the teachers presented my certificate. After handing it to me she remained up in front of the entire student body and looked out across the auditorium. “I have a few words I want to say right now,” she began, her voice unusually high. Then, to my embarrassment, she bawled out the White kids because they had allowed me to be number one. “You're not trying hard enough,” she told them.

While she never quite said it in words, she let them know that a Black person shouldn't be number one in a class where everyone else was White.

As the teacher continued to berate the other students, a number of things tumbled about inside my mind. Of course, I was hurt. I had worked hard to be the top of my class—probably harder than anyone else in the school—and she was putting me down because I wasn't the same color. On the one hand I thought,
What a turkey this woman is!
Then an angry determination welled up inside.
I'll show you and all the others too!

I couldn't understand why this woman talked the way she did. She had taught me herself in several classes, had seemed to like me, and she clearly knew that I had earned my grades and merited the certificate of achievement. Why would she say all these harsh things? Was she so ignorant that she didn't realize that people are just people? That their skin or their race doesn't make them smarter or dumber? It also occurred to me that, given enough situations, there are bound to be instances where minorities are smarter. Couldn't she realize that?

Despite my hurt and anger, I didn't say anything. I sat quietly while she railed. Several of the White kids glanced over at me occasionally, rolling their eyes to let me understand their disgust. I sensed they were trying to say to me, “What a dummy she is!”

Some of those very kids, who, three years earlier, had taunted me, had become my friends. They were feeling embarrassed, and I could read resentment on several faces.

I didn't tell Mother about that teacher. I didn't think it would do any good and would only hurt her feelings.

The third incident that stands out in my memory centered around the football team. In our neighborhood we had a football league. When I was in the seventh grade, playing football was the big thing in athletics.

Naturally, both Curtis and I wanted to play. Neither of us Carsons were large to begin with. In fact, compared to the other players, we were quite small. But we had one advantage. We were fast—so fast that we could outrun everybody else on the field. Because the Carson brothers made such good showings, our performance apparently upset a few of the White people.

One afternoon when Curtis and I left the field after practice, a group of White men, none of them over 30 years old, surrounded us. Their menacing anger showed clearly before they said a word. I wasn't sure if they were part of the gang that had threatened me at the railroad crossing. I only knew I was scared.

Then one man stepped forward. “If you guys come back we're going to throw you into the river,” he said. Then they turned and walked away from us.

Would they have carried out their threat? Curtis and I weren't as concerned about that as we were with the fact that they didn't want us in the league.

As we walked home, I said to my brother, “Who wants to play football when your own supporters are against you?”

“I think we can find better things to do with our time,” Curtis said.

We never said anything to anyone about quitting, but we never went back to practice. Nobody in the neighborhood ever asked us why. To Mother I said, “We decided not to play football,” Curtis said something about studying more.

We had decided to say nothing to Mother about the threat, knowing that if we did, she'd be worried sick about us. As an adult looking backward, it's ironic about our family. When we were younger, through her silence Mother had protected us from the truth about Dad and her emotional problems. Now it was our turn to protect her so she wouldn't worry. We chose the same method.

CHAPTER 5

A Boy's Big Problem

K
now what the Indians did with General Custer's worn-out clothes?” the gang leader asked.

“Tell us,” one of his cohorts shot back with exaggerated interest.

“They saved them and now our man Carson wears them!”

Another kid nodded vigorously. “Sure looks it.”

I could feel the heat rising up my neck and cheeks. The guys were at it again.

“Get close enough and you'll believe it,” the first fellow laughed, “'cuz they smell like they're a hundred years old!”

New in the grade of 8-A at Hunter Junior High, I found capping an embarrassing and painful experience. The term comes from the word capitalize and is slang that means to get the better of another person. The idea was to make the most sarcastic remark possible, throwing in a quick barb to keep it humorous. Capping was always done within earshot of the victim, and the best targets were the kids whose clothes were a little out of style. The best cappers waited until a group collected around the violator. Then they'd compete to see who could say the funniest and most insulting things.

I was a special target. For one thing, clothes hadn't meant much to me then, and they don't today. Except for a brief period in my life, I've not been much concerned about what I wore, because like Mother always said, “Bennie, what's inside counts the most. Anybody can dress up on the outside and be dead inside.”

I hated leaving Wilson Junior High at the middle of the eighth grade but was excited to be moving back to our old house. As I said to myself, “We're going home again!” That was the most important thing of all.

Because of my mother's frugality, our financial situation had gradually improved. Mother was finally able to get enough money, and we moved back to the house where we lived before my parents divorced.

Despite the smallness of the house, it was home. Today I see it more realistically—more like a matchbox. But to the three of us then, the house seemed like a mansion, a really fabulous place.

But moving home meant the need to change schools. While Curtis went on to Southwestern High School, I enrolled in Hunter Junior High, a predominantly Black school with about 30 percent of the students White.