Re: Satch Sanders

[opi@unesco.org]

Thanks also Kevin Lok, for that post.

As for Cecil Wright (one of the MVP Celts and Red Sox list posters IMO), I was
just a dumb immigrant but I also grew up with a vague memory of the 70s busing
crisis in Boston (adults hurling bricks at school buses transporting black
students to white neighborhoods etc). Still, as far as I gathered from our
ocasional off-list e-mail exchanges, you were anything but a "small black boy"
from Roxbury. In fact you very casually informed me once that you were a
linebacker in high school and college who I assume might still be tempted to
deliver a can or two of whup-ass on the dastardly Dan Forant and the rest of us
who fall out of line on occasion.

Joe H.

***

Cecil Wright wrote:

> Thanks for posting this story Kevin.  I was one of those small black boys
> who lived in Roxbury in the early 60's, wondering if I would be able to make
> it to the 70's.  My family also moved to a suburban, predominantly white
> community where we faced some hostility, but fortunately, not to the same
> degree as Satch, Russell or any other number of black athletes who toiled in
> Boston.
>
> Many of the other high school athletes from Boston, who I later went to
> college with, were involved in the METCO program.  Most people thought how
> nice it was for them to have an opportunity for them to go to a "good"
> school outside the city limits.  What they failed to recognize is that they
> had to rise at 5am to get the transpoprtation to arrive on time.  And if
> they were involved in a team sport, there were times when they wouldn't make
> it home until late in the evening.  Certainly, it was a heavy cross to bear.
>
> Alot of people will not see the pain behind such stories, but it is real,
> and most often, overlooked.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> Cecil