Does the name Willie Horton mean anything to you?
It does to me. It means a lot.
It may mean a particular Presidential campaign ad.
It may mean the derailment of Dukakis' presidential bid, or the beginning of the first round of Bush years. A watershed low in political ads. It played to racism, conscious and otherwise. It was built to fear-monger, and it was very effective.
The name itself became loaded with ugliness, a weapon, a threat. Those two words became a political hand grenade. And I hated that for an additional reason, a personal reason.
I'm not an educated or articulate person. I'm not much good at reasoned debate. I can't speak to being a POC.
But I can tell you about Willie Horton.
Because I'm a baseball fan who grew up in Detroit. Willie Horton wore #23, Willie the Wonder, he was my first Tiger. Having a Tiger is like having an OTP. Your Tiger kind of... chooses you. You don't pour over the stats and go with the best numbers. It's not rational, it just sort of hits you. First love, baseball style.
I don't remember seeing him play my first game at Tiger Stadium. I was four. It was the summer after the [12th Street] riots, the year we won the World Series.
I'm not even going to bring the eyeglazing stats that baseball fans live for. Just some basics from the blurb on his biography-
From The People's Champion by Kevin Allen
It's that second paragraph.
In the middle one of the deadliest riots in US history, with the National Guard rolling tanks into neighborhoods and folks dying in the streets, the man got up on top of his car and did what he thought he could in an impossible situation. Maybe that doesn't seem like much to you. It touches me. Everyday heroics, from someone in a position to avoid the whole situation. Because it was his city in that mess.
Those were unimaginable days, forty years ago this July, from what I know from people who remember. People hid in their homes, fought in the streets, some ran and never looked back. These are people who died. 33 of them black, 10 of them not. That number has been disputed by pretty much everyone I grew up with. They put the number of dead in the hundreds.
I really don't know if I can express what that World Series win the following summer did for my city. I can tell you Willie Horton is credited with making the assist that saved the series.
This is Mr. Horton, at the dedication of his memorial at Northwestern, his old high school -
I hope the next time you hear the name, maybe you'll remember this too.
________________________________________
I don't really know if this qualifies as an IBARW entry - It's not deep, it's fully fannish, and it barely touches on the fact that exploitive racist attitudes and fears behind that ad are what made the whole thing possible. Don't know if I've made the connection that ugly race-based tactics using one black man besmirtched another. It doesn't address the man used to win an election.
And it really doesn't begin to touch the riots, the conditions that led to them, and what they left behind.
I love my hometown. I love my ballclub.
And I'm pleased that Google pulls up my childhood hero as the first hit for the name.
________________________________________
It does to me. It means a lot.
It may mean a particular Presidential campaign ad.
It may mean the derailment of Dukakis' presidential bid, or the beginning of the first round of Bush years. A watershed low in political ads. It played to racism, conscious and otherwise. It was built to fear-monger, and it was very effective.
The name itself became loaded with ugliness, a weapon, a threat. Those two words became a political hand grenade. And I hated that for an additional reason, a personal reason.
I'm not an educated or articulate person. I'm not much good at reasoned debate. I can't speak to being a POC.
But I can tell you about Willie Horton.
Because I'm a baseball fan who grew up in Detroit. Willie Horton wore #23, Willie the Wonder, he was my first Tiger. Having a Tiger is like having an OTP. Your Tiger kind of... chooses you. You don't pour over the stats and go with the best numbers. It's not rational, it just sort of hits you. First love, baseball style.
I don't remember seeing him play my first game at Tiger Stadium. I was four. It was the summer after the [12th Street] riots, the year we won the World Series.
I'm not even going to bring the eyeglazing stats that baseball fans live for. Just some basics from the blurb on his biography-
From The People's Champion by Kevin Allen
At 15, Willie Horton received his first contract offer to become
a professional baseball player. At 16, Horton walloped
a pitch into the light tower standard above the third deck at
Tiger Stadium during the Public School League championship
game. At 17, he was a boxing champion. At 20, he
smacked his first major league home run off Robin Roberts.
At 24, Horton stood, fully uniformed, on the hood of his car,
in the midst of burning homes, overturned cars and ransacked
businesses, and pleaded for an end to the violence of
the 1967 riots.
At 25, he led his hometown Detroit Tigers to
its first World Series title in almost a quarter of a century.
It's that second paragraph.
In the middle one of the deadliest riots in US history, with the National Guard rolling tanks into neighborhoods and folks dying in the streets, the man got up on top of his car and did what he thought he could in an impossible situation. Maybe that doesn't seem like much to you. It touches me. Everyday heroics, from someone in a position to avoid the whole situation. Because it was his city in that mess.
Those were unimaginable days, forty years ago this July, from what I know from people who remember. People hid in their homes, fought in the streets, some ran and never looked back. These are people who died. 33 of them black, 10 of them not. That number has been disputed by pretty much everyone I grew up with. They put the number of dead in the hundreds.
I really don't know if I can express what that World Series win the following summer did for my city. I can tell you Willie Horton is credited with making the assist that saved the series.
This is Mr. Horton, at the dedication of his memorial at Northwestern, his old high school -
I hope the next time you hear the name, maybe you'll remember this too.
________________________________________
I don't really know if this qualifies as an IBARW entry - It's not deep, it's fully fannish, and it barely touches on the fact that exploitive racist attitudes and fears behind that ad are what made the whole thing possible. Don't know if I've made the connection that ugly race-based tactics using one black man besmirtched another. It doesn't address the man used to win an election.
And it really doesn't begin to touch the riots, the conditions that led to them, and what they left behind.
I love my hometown. I love my ballclub.
And I'm pleased that Google pulls up my childhood hero as the first hit for the name.
________________________________________
#23
Martha & the Vandellas - 'Dancing in the Streets'2 | comment
