Empathy

 The picture shown below is taken from the 1967 Robert E. Lee High School yearbook, The Legend. It is a picture of the basketball team my senior year. I am number 31 in the photo. Also in the picture is Jimmy Johnson, number 15. He was the first African-American to play varsity basketball at our high school in Tyler, Texas. 

As Thanksgiving season was approaching recently, my mind went back to another Thanksgiving week long ago, likely only a few weeks after the above picture was taken. Our high school team was traveling to scrimmage a neighboring high school in Athens, Texas. It was our only scrimmage before the season began. I can still remember small details like getting dressed for the game and then beginning to play. 

But the most significant memory is not how the team played or how many points I scored, rather it was the officials' stopping the game because a pocket knife fell on the court from the uniform of Jimmy Johnson. I don't remember the officials' making a big deal out of it. They simply stopped the game and handed the knife to Coach Bell. Then the game resumed. Afterwards nothing was said that I recall.  

But on further reflection, I wonder how much empathy did I have for my teammate that Saturday of Thanksgiving week. He must have been extremely anxious to go to the extent of taking a pocket knife with him, secured in his basketball trunks. I never talked to him about the incident even though I took him home after practice most days. He lived just over the hill about a mile from my home. I thought nothing about Jimmy's being on our team. It was not an unusual  thing for me because I had worked in the fields as a young boy with African-Americans while I was growing up.

What was he feeling not only that November day but also throughout the entire season? Jimmy was only one of about seven African- American students who were in his junior class of roughly 400 students at RELHS.  Although I was probably closer to Jimmy than the other players on the team were, I don't remember our eating a meal at each others' homes or going to church together. It was the beginning of integration in the South some ten-plus years after Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling on May 17, 1954.

In retrospect I consider this young African-American a hero in the  integration process of the Tyler Independent School District. I have recently tried to get in contact with him but to no avail. I plan to go back to the St. Louis community where he grew up, located on Frankston Highway near Loop 323 in Tyler. I hope I can find someone who remembers him or knows where he is now, almost fifty-five years since those days. 

I mention this story because of the lessons that are connected to leadership. I was the team captain that year. I had a relationship with Jimmy enough to take him home from practice in my blue 1950-model Ford. We talked some on those rides but it could have been more. I think now about how much anxiety he must have felt. How did he handle the loneliness of being the only one of his race on the varsity?  

What lessons from that era have I carried with me into today's culture? How do I treat people like Jimmy in my world now? How much empathy do I show to those who are in the minority as he was during that 1966-67 school year? Do I see others who need my help and friendship? Do I love my neighbor as myself? I am convinced that effective leaders are perceptive and empathic to those who are in need of a friend. This can and should be taught and emulated as we strive to help others become the best they can be in any field of leadership. 

Remember, I believe we are all leaders regardless of our position.