Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Noon on February 29, 2020. 11,000 people fill the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, basketball home of Louisiana State University (LSU). One of the 11,000, waiting for the moment, his afro hair so recognizable, Colin Kaepernick.
Everything works on the parquet. Paaaaah, the horn sounds and LSU goes into halftime up eight points. Perfect. Those present can now relax for the tribute.
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf appears in the center of the track —1.83 meters, mulatto, whitening hair and goatee, enviable physique for his 50 years. Family and former colleagues surround him while his shirt with 35 ascends to the roof of the pavilion. Where she will remain retired from that moment along with the other idols of the Tigers: Shaquille O’Neal, Seimone Augustus, Pete Maravich, Bob Pettit.
It is a kind of reparation to a man, to a name, that was not of his time. LSU star in the late ’80s by the name of Chris Jackson, almost-who-figures-NBA during the ’90s already by the last name of Abdul-Rauf, missing in action for years after not respect the anthem of the USA. Jackson first, Abdul-Rauf second, dribbled and shot long. He was critical of his country. And both reasons, today part of the normality in his sport, were enough to exile him to 20 years of ostracism.
His is a particular story. Because it is not about his changes, about the timeline that goes from a small Mississippi town to a Malcolm X book to that February 29, 2020 where time proved him partially right. His advance story, rather, speaks of the changes that occurred around him, around us.
Down in the Gulf
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf was born Chris Jackson on March 9, 1969, in Gulport. A place like many in the deep south; like many in the state of Mississippi, the poorest in the US. Oppressive, waterlogged, suffocating.
Not just because of the weather.
Over the years, Abdul-Rauf would remember an article for SLAM magazine a defining anecdote from his childhood. Next to his house, crossing the train tracks, he saw how a procession of white robes and masks headed for the beach. With total normality, tolerated as if it were an innocent march of boyscouts. Era el Ku Klux Klan.
Those train tracks are yet another stretch in the chasm between classes that defines the United States. To one side lives the rich white neighborhood. Where the police don’t patrol but stroll, and the KKK marches whistling. To the other, misery. A ghetto in which the Jackson house was a place of common territory for the African-American lower class: three children of three different fathers, all three absent. A mother who does not reach the end of the month. Very little to put in the mouth. And, to top it off, a Tourette syndrome that Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf took years to see diagnosed.
What did basketball paint in all this? The usual: a blind hope, a kamikaze flight to assault a better life.
Chris Jackson would go out to play in the street at five in the morning, when his mother left for work. He believed, he intuited, he hoped —as much as it was not true— that basketball was his only way out. He stood out and became a star in the Mississippi high school leagues. For many he is the best player in the history of the state. It was thanks to that reputation that…
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