Becoming Kareem: Introduction–Chapter 6

I was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame under that name.

I was at the height of the success I had worked so hard my whole life to achieve. Which is why it came as such a shock when the day after winning the national championship, I announced to the world that I was no longer Lew Alcindor, but Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which means “noble servant of God.”

People thought it was just a phase I was going through—an impressionable college kid experimenting with alternative ideas and lifestyles, like becoming a vegan or getting an eyebrow piercing.

Because of my fame as a professional basketball player, and because so few Americans knew anything about Islam back in the 1970s, there was a lot of angry backlash.

Lew Alcindor carried the name and religion of the white slaveholder who had exploited, humiliated, and abused my ancestors.

Our neighbors formed a mini United Nations of Russians, Scandinavians, Jews, Irish, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans, along with about 15 percent black residents. My friends and neighbors spoke in a variety of lilting and guttural accents, which thrilled me.

Our neighbors formed a mini United Nations of Russians, Scandinavians, Jews, Irish, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans, along with about 15 percent black residents. My friends and neighbors spoke in a variety of lilting and guttural accents, which thrilled me.

Once, she chased me after Little League practice while I had my Louisville slugger in my hand. I still ran, but this time when she cornered me on that same playground, I took a couple of tentative swings with my bat at her legs.

She straddled me and pressed the bat against my throat with a victorious smile.

I was still the Lew who played occasional pranks at school, mostly slapstick stuff I saw the Three Stooges do on TV, like pulling out a chair when a kid was about to sit down, then saying, “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.”

My mom was especially fervent in preaching the gospel of education from her kitchen table pulpit.

I wasn’t aware of this when I was a kid and my parents were nagging me to study, study, study. They offered cash incentives for good grades. A good report card meant doubling my allowance to one dollar!

Fortunately, my default setting was Good Boy, which meant that I pretty much did whatever they told me.

As a child, I didn’t think of my dad as secretive so much as just nonverbal.

“Big Al,” as he was called, was two hundred pounds and six foot three. He loomed over my childhood, casting a large, cold shadow.

Others in the neighborhood were equally intimidated by his size and his general demeanor of intense judgment.

He and my mom even sang together in the Hall Johnson Choir, a famous black choral ensemble that performed in Broadway shows and movies featuring African American spirituals. Music animated my father.

My mom and dad came to a couple of Little League games during those four years, but it wasn’t a priority. At least I won Player Having the Most Fun Award. That was a pretty accurate assessment of my sports skills.

Instead, he had brutishly proved his point that he was the man of the house.

My mom was a more reasonable coach, and from her I learned how to be pragmatic about daily life, especially about money.

We went to the movies often, especially if the film starred William Holden, whom she had a crush on. At that time, Holden was in his early thirties, a handsome man who often played a lovable rogue, someone just out for himself at the start of the movie, but ending up doing the right thing.

Actually, most of my mom’s lessons as a coach were inadvertent.

I had no coping skills when it came to racism.

When I first saw Holy Providence Boarding School’s red-tile roofs and endless archways, I thought of it as just another Catholic school masquerading as a tranquil abbey.

When I first saw Holy Providence Boarding School’s red-tile roofs and endless archways, I thought of it as just another Catholic school masquerading as a tranquil abbey.

When I first saw Holy Providence Boarding School’s red-tile roofs and endless archways, I thought of it as just another Catholic school masquerading as a tranquil abbey.

It was run by devout Catholics, and that meant lots and lots of rules strictly enforced.

The Catholic teachers may have taught us that the meek shall inherit the earth, but at Holy Providence the meek were force-fed the earth.

I first learned about prejudice against skin color by being on the receiving end—not from white people, but from the other black kids at my school.

Despite my ineptitude, I was still the second-tallest kid, which automatically put me on the school’s basketball team.

There was a lot of running up and down the court, hurling the ball in the general vicinity of the basket. I ran, too, but in a loping shuffle. Flailing spastically was my go-to move.

Rather than slink away in defeat and humiliation, I took the very same shot the next time I got the ball.

At nine years old, I had found the shot that made me feel like an athlete, that made me feel I was in control of this gangly body that so far had done nothing but isolate me from others.

The school’s mission was to teach us the ways of Christian fellowship, but instead it had taught me the ways of violence and pettiness.

When my parents picked me up from school, they immediately commented on how I had changed. I was sullen, didn’t smile, didn’t talk. They were right, and I blamed them for the change.

Before Holy Providence, my height had been a novelty: something to joke about, but not to take seriously.

There seemed to be something broken in the church if this was how its followers behaved. I buried that heresy deep inside because good boys didn’t question the church, but the seed was planted, and it kept growing bigger as I did the same.

I tried talking to him, but he was brusque and dismissive, assuring me nothing was wrong, but always having to hurry off to be somewhere else.

Around this time, St. Jude added two more black kids to the school population, and the three of us gravitated to one another, which was only natural given the undercurrent of racial hostility that was evident to us, even when it wasn’t evident to the white kids.

Around this time, St. Jude added two more black kids to the school population, and the three of us gravitated to one another, which was only natural given the undercurrent of racial hostility that was evident to us, even when it wasn’t evident to the white kids.