Adams’ Castle Put Me On My Way
“We Believe” — This is the second in a five-part series on the author’s reflections on the crisis in urban education and his alma mater, a…
“We Believe” — This is the second in a five-part series on the author’s reflections on the crisis in urban education and his alma mater, a place he calls “Adams’ Castle”
If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.
— Carter G. Woodson
By John W. Fountain
Grass, emerald-green, lush and alive. Proud blades that point toward the sky. Perfectly manicured, it glistens beneath the sun.
That was nearly 40 years ago.
And yet, for as far as I could see the other morning, outside the yellowish-brick castle in the 100 block of South Central Park, it still shimmers in the wind and sunlight — a simple symbol of promise, pride and hope, nearly four decades since I first laid my eyes on it.
I don’t recall exactly the first time I saw the lawn outside Providence-St. Mel, or Paul J. Adams, III — the man responsible. It must have been sometime in 1974 — back when Afros and bell-bottom pants were signs of the times and the struggle to lay hold on the American dream still seemed ever elusive for blacks in America.
What I do recall clearly is the notion that grass wouldn’t — couldn’t — grow on the West Side: too poor, too ghetto, too far from the fertile soil from which sprouts the stuff of American dreams.
“As a poor kid, I was the kind who, like many children from similar backgrounds today, was written off by researchers…”
Back then, in neighborhoods like K-Town, where I grew up, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that might be the case: broken glass, bald lawns and vacant lots, blight, poverty and despair that flowed like a river of hopelessness. Back then, I remember the sprinklers outside St. Mel, the spray of water that doused Mr. Adams’ lawn endlessly and how as a high school freshman I quickly learned one of his most important rules: Don’t step on the grass, or else pay a fine.
To some, it might have seemed ridiculous to impose a penalty for something so infinitesimal. It might also have seemed difficult to fathom how something as simple as grass might be proof enough that some things others deem impossible — with a little planting, watering and vision — might indeed become possible.
As a poor kid, I was the kind who, like many children from similar backgrounds today, was written off by researchers, given my demographics of having been born black and poor and raised in the urban ghetto — hopelessly predestined to an unalterable mortal existence in the so-called “permanent underclass,” never to rise.
Without my mother’s decision and sacrifice in 1974 to send me to Providence-St. Mel, which set me on a different path than so many of my childhood friends, I might have succumbed to the death of dreams that eventually entombs dreams too long deferred. Maybe not.
This much is not debatable: That for 40 years, Paul Adams has helped lead poor Chicago children to the Promised Land of educational success and that since 1979 every one of the school’s graduates has been admitted to a college or university.
This much is also clear these days: That for 40 years, the Chicago Public School system has largely wandered in the wilderness of “miseducation” and still has yet to fully cross the sea of red-tape bureaucracy occupied by a union that often seems more concerned for teachers than students, and by bureaucrats who by their failure to fix the system after all this time leaves me wondering whether they ever really want to.
At 13, I saw Paul Adams as a lion of a man, his proud woolen Afro as his mane, and every square inch of Adams’ Castle, including every blade of grass, as his domain. More importantly, I found inside the school’s walls safe-haven from the perilous streets of my neighborhood. I found educational opportunity and the expectation of success. I found through one man’s vision sufficiency to dream.
And I came to see that educating poor children is indeed possible, even in a place where they say the grass won’t grow.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
Website: http://www.johnwfountain.com
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