White on Black: RIP James Charles

Just this past month America lost a great man who wasn’t famous nationally although I know locally he was well known and highly respected. I share his memory now with a wider audience because he epitomized what great leadership is all about. I think, especially during these troubling times, it’s important to know we do indeed have people who can lead us to better ways. James Charles, who died May 20 after a long career serving others, was one of them.

Mr. Charles was my principal for two years during one of the most difficult times of my life and enormously influential in shaping my vision of the world around me. Mr. Charles didn’t just teach me about how a school should be directed and improved, he taught me how to be a better man, and did so mostly by example.

Mr. Charles was a large African American raised during a very bigoted time in Louisiana that did not allow people of his race to go to school with white people or even use the same restroom or restaurant. In spite of all of this, he did not hate white people and had many white friends. I was most blessed to be one of them. I also know, from two years of close contact, he treated all by the golden rule, and that means treating others as we want to be treated ourselves, a wise practice that seems to be gone from much public and political discourse.  Years ago, I titled a draft story about him “Moses Parts the Waters” because this was how his impact appeared to me at the time, miraculous, although I learned eventually it was the sort of thing that often happens around people to whom God gives mighty gifts.

We spend a lot of time in society training people for various positions, but I think training only goes so far and that the true greats are simply endowed by our creator with abilities and personal charisma at birth and then raised by parents who enhance these qualities. We can’t make great people and sadly too many like Mr. Charles avoid public sector leadership roles today. I think this is so because in America we make a sport out of seeing how much abuse we can heap on our leaders in a continuous power struggle that began when our nation was formed and never really stopped, except for brief intervals when some outside force threatened all of us and brought us together for the common good.

In studies for a master’s degree in education I was taught it commonly takes about five years to turn around a troubled school. I watched Mr. Charles do this in six months, and boys and girls, Ellender Memorial Junior High in Houma Louisiana in 1985 was a deeply troubled school, just about as bad as it gets. Today I very much view the circumstance surrounding the school as a microcosm of America these past few weeks.

The year before I arrived at what I later began to think were the gates to hell, a group of black kids charged into a white teacher’s classroom and beat the man so badly he was hospitalized. I didn’t see the beating but knew the beaten teacher a little, enough to think he had no business being a teacher. Once again, there are at least two sides to any story, often a lot more, but only the best of us can quickly see the many dynamics and act upon them as Mr. Charles often did. Had he been leading Ellender at the time of this incident, it wouldn’t have happened because Mr. Charles would have corrected the teacher earlier or had him fired, and the kids would have not acted the way they did even when dealing with a bad situation. We all tend to act up or down depending on our environment and Mr. Charles knew how to create the best environment possible, a true leader in every respect.

We didn’t have assemblies the first year I worked at Ellender, the year before Mr. Charles took over. I was told the last time one was held a riot broke out and multiple weapons were found.

Upon first contact, I was greatly perplexed by Ellender’s intangibles I couldn’t put in context because I lacked a background on different school environments to know what I experienced. It would be years later when my father said to me about school climate, ” You can feel a good school almost from the time you walk into it, and the same goes for a bad one.” I don’t know what sort of sensory, or extrasensory apparatus is at work here, but I’ve grown to believe one can indeed take a quick pulse of a school and tell rather quickly if the patient is healthy or in some state of disease. To me in the beginning, Ellender was as cold as a corpse two days in the county morgue.

No longer being a stranger to my school system, I did know I wasn’t headed to heaven. Ellender, much like Grand Caillou, had a reputation as being a difficult place to teach, featuring an equally troubled student body, one again all too familiar with crime, poverty and rampant ignorance. I suppose I just naturally gravitate to happy places.

While the student population didn’t appear to be much more than 25 percent black, Ellender was known as a “black school,” and did take in many students from a federal housing project known as Senator Circle, almost exclusively black. White people wouldn’t even drive through Senator Circle, except for armed police officers, who also tried to avoid the place if they could. Just to be clear, we have neighborhoods all over America like this and always have, much to our collective shame.

The anger level of poor black children was unexpected because I hadn’t encountered the animosity from black kids or teachers at Grand Caillou, but I contended with it continuously at Ellender. I’d found at Grand Caillou that kids of all races, blacks definitely included, would first view me with indifference, not outright mistrust and anger. This was not the case at Ellender. I could see angry suspicion on far too many black faces to fail to recognize I was seen as just another threatening white man, deserving of negative assessment, unless or until, I proved myself differently. Fortunately, with the kids, and later with adults too, while this did take time, I soon found it possible to translate my genuine interest in black folks as equals, and the walls slowly and cautiously came down.

Just like the students, staff members segregated themselves into unofficial racially divided eating areas, which, at the time, I felt unwise to break. Maybe I should have, but like the other sheep, I sat with my own herd, quietly, for the most part, as I picked up and listened to the casual conversations going around the lunchroom and began wondering why I ever asked to work here.

I was initially moved by Mr. Charles when he stood before us in the library on the first day of school, projecting, naturally I soon learned, an air of one who was not only in charge, but should be. He could do this with students as well as teachers, soon being the first person I knew brave enough to gather the hordes of EMS together in assemblies of teachers and students. Many predicted big trouble at our first one, and considering the kinds of problems we usually had, I was one of them.

But Mr. Charles brought us together, treated us with kindness and respect, and demanded we do the same. He got it done in both directions.

“First of all,” he said sternly at our opening of school meeting, ” I want to make one thing clear. No one, and I mean no one, is going to curse teachers and get away with it. The first one who does goes home, and the rest will follow, until we get that message across.”

Speaking to a group who heard “motherfucker” almost as often as “good morning,” the statement had such impact that even the many outspoken critics, malcontents, and faculty clowns, were stunned into silence. I include myself in this collection. Had anyone else said this, one would hear things like “Oh sure” or “And who does he think he is?” murmuring about in the back rows.

But no one said anything, the soft hum of the air conditioners whirred in otherwise complete silence.

“While we’re on the subject of respect,” Mr. Charles continued. “I want you to always remember why we’re here. We’re here for the kids, and for no other reason. I’m sure you all know that, but I just thought saying it now would establish why I’m here and what I want from you.”

It takes almost innumerable qualities to do what Mr. Charles accomplished and it would take too long to describe even some of them, so I’ll just focus on one. Mr. Charles was a master politician, which some take as a negative, but an effective leader must be able to work skillfully on multiple levels with diverse groups of people. He could make his edicts stick with the black community because he was deeply respected and had the ear of major black leaders. He could also do the same in the white community for the same reason. He was universally trusted and respected and could write checks few could cash because he had a big social bank account and the courage to draw upon it any time this was needed.

Mr. Charles never deviated from his course of mutual respect to my knowledge. He could, at appropriate times, do a little cursing himself, but if you were chewed out by this great man it was in private, as all corrective measure should be whenever possible. He practiced what another great educator years later taught me: “Praise in public. Criticize in private.”

Generally, I avoid public ceremonies like weddings and funerals if I can, always feeling like I should be someplace else and don’t belong, feelings I must admit I have about much of life in general. However, had I known about Mr. Charles’ passing in time and it been possible to attend his funeral, both not the case, I would have found it impossible not to say goodbye in person. He moved my heart and mind as few ever did and changed my life as a great leader can do for many. I owe him much. I feel a great loss but also grateful for the time we had together.

I guess this small tribute will have to do for my distant eulogy, but it’s not nearly enough, and never is for this kind of person.