Floor Burns
by M.C. Antil

Chapter Fourteen: Bridging Two Worlds

As an issue, civil rights had taken its own sweet time about coming to the Salt City.  It was not, in fact, until well over a decade after the likes of Brown v. the Board of Education, Rosa Parks and Emmett Till that the inherent rights of African Americans had become a regular topic of conversation in Syracuse.

That’s not to say, however, the seeds of the civil rights movement hadn’t already been planted.  To the contrary, long before such news-making event would alter the front page of virtually every newspaper of the early 50’s, a soft-spoken, forty-something year old from the tiny crossroads of Waterville, New York had already started what, at the time, was a personal, one-man crusade on behalf of the rights of those of color in his adopted hometown of Syracuse.

When Father Charlie Brady left Most Holy Rosary parish for the Pacific Theater in the latter stages of World War II, the unassuming and unremarkable farmer's son was so horrifically bad at sermons, and so painfully uncomfortable in front of crowds, that most secretly feared the guy would never amount to even an average parish priest, much less a good one. In a way, those people were right – but for the wrong reasons.

Because by the time he returned from that bloodiest of conflicts in the South Pacific, Charlie Brady did so a changed man. He was no longer the wide-eyed optimist who’d left months earlier to do his clerical duty in a mind-numbing succession of makeshift hospitals and blood-soaked battlefields. The optimism he’d always held dear remained pure. What changed – and changed dramatically – was his focus.

You see, over there Brady had gotten to know hundreds of African American fighting men: brave husbands, fathers and sons, many from poor homes in segregated towns teeming with those who loathed and feared them. Yet, despite this, these young soldiers, flyboys and seamen continued to fight and die, and continued to find it within themselves to do defend those who, in a different world and under different circumstances, would just as soon see them lynched.

That bitter irony, combined with that extraordinary level of self-sacrifice, made an impression on Brady that affected him deeply. As a result, his time on the front lines inspired in him with a deeper and far more personal calling.

Charlie Brady’s time on active duty altered forever the arc and path of his spiritual life. It also turned his relationship with his adopted hometown on its ear. Because following the war, his idea of “God’s work” became far more practical than it had ever been, while less in keeping with so many beliefs held by so many in the Catholic Church – including a few held by his own bishop.

At some point during that man-made hell a half a world away, Brady had made a promise to God that, should he return, he’d not just spread the Word of the Almighty, he’d put it to work.

This was especially true for those living in what he was soon calling the "shadows" of society – notably, his country's black citizens. To that end, he'd end up spending the rest of his days in the pursuit of taking God and out of the sanctuary and placing Him squarely where He'd do the most good for his hometown’s neediest – especially poor people of color.

One day, not long after his return, Brady sat down and wrote his bishop a letter. In it, he asked for a meeting, telling the head of the diocese he had a request.  At the subsequent meeting, even as he stumbled over his words, Brady explained he’d come back from the South Pacific a changed man and hoped to be reassigned to a flock more in need of his street-level brand of communion. He told Bishop Foery he hoped to spread the gospel in Syracuse's 15th Ward, and wondered if the bishop might consider allowing him to work tending to the city’s poorest souls in its blackest and most blighted neighborhood.

Foery, the spiritual godfather of the Parochial League, as well as its biggest booster and protector, listened patiently but, in the end, skeptically. He was, after all, a deeply conservative cleric who’d need a lot of convincing before taking such a bold step.  Nevertheless, a few days later, a letter arrived at the Rosary rectory. It was from the chancery and read in part:

 

Dear Father Brady

I am pleased to welcome you home from the Armed Services and delighted to give you an assignment.

You are hereby appointed Pastor of the Negro People of the City of Syracuse…

With every good wish and asking God to bless you in your new work in our Diocese, I am

 

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Walter Foery
Bishop of Syracuse

 

In 1946, Reverend Charles J. Brady set up his mission for the “Negroes” of his hometown in a small, red-brick church near the East Genesee Street Boy’s Club, just inside the northern boundary of the Ward. For years, St. Joseph’s French Church had been a house of worship for the city's small community of first and second-generation French immigrants. But as those immigrants began integrating into the city proper, they were supplanted by a combination of poor whites and blacks, many of whom had grown up Southern Baptists. As this evolution played out, St, Joe's donations slowed to a trickle and the city's smallest parish fell on hard times.

What didn’t change, however, was its role as a haven to those seeking spiritual (and often physical) comfort. Even as its neighborhood continued to deteriorate, and even as (financially anyway) St. Joe's continued to journey down a rough and rocky road, many Catholics throughout the city continued to make their weekly pilgrimage there for Sunday mass. One motivating factor was the chance to hear the kind words of St. Joe's pastor, a gentle, elderly man named Father David Norcott. These Catholics found in Norcott and simple church a spiritual haven in which they could – at least for an hour every week – bear witness the Word of God in action. Because Norcott was a priest who didn't so much preach the gospel of human dignity as live it. And he did so not just on Sunday, but every day of the week.

For many residents of the Ward, especially those living in (or near) poverty, Norcott’s little house of worship became something more than a shrine to piety and communion. It became a manifestation of humanity, a place where Syracuse’s coldest and hungriest could find a little comfort and more than a measure of physical and emotional shelter. And dozens of the city's indigents, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, soon began visiting St. Joseph’s regularly, and doing so more out of physical need than any overwhelming sense of spiritual hunger.

As for Brady, the very first day he set up shop at St. Joe's was the very day he set out to turn himself into a full-fledged citizen of the Ward. Almost overnight, he transformed himself into one of its most outgoing residents. He'd often walk the streets for hours, from early morning until late at night, stopping to talk to shop owners, residents and vagrants alike, this despite the fact he constantly suffered from crippling bouts of a malaria-induced fever, a disease he'd contracted in the Pacific.  He also regularly felt the tiring effects of what turned out to be a defective heart, likewise a result of the malaria.

Yet, while expending so much shoe leather in the name of Jesus, Brady never bothered to preach, try to convert, or even mention the Lord by name. Instead, when he spoke of God at all, he did so indirectly, presenting him as a benevolent and loving constant in our lives – someone who was always there, regardless of where, when or even why we needed him.

Brady did, however, put the Lord front and center in at least one regard. Whenever he’d finish talking with someone, he’d invariably give that person a smile (and, often, a gentle pat on the arm), while softly uttering the three words that would soon become his very own catchphrase: “God love ya.” Brady was constantly smiling, constantly reaching out, and constantly striking up conversations with strangers as he made his way through the Ward. Sometimes he’d forgo conversation altogether. He’d simply smile warmly, wave, and say to anyone he passed, “God love ya.”

But Brady was more than just a glad-hander or a man free with a few kind words. He was a doer. To that end, one of the first things he did as missionary to Syracuse’s few thousand  African Americans was to work with Norcott on making St. Joe’s even more vital to Ward life in general – and not just its Catholics, but those of all faiths. Eventually, St. Joseph’s French Church began staying open well past its evening confession hours, as often as late as 11 p.m. This provided the homeless a place to go to keep warm and dry, particularly during the city’s snowy and often brutally cold winter months.

Brady knew that, as important as spiritual sustenance was, food for the soul paled compared to physical nourishment, especially when the alternative was hunger. As a result, virtually every day he’d solicit donations of fresh and canned food from Loblaws Supermarket and other smaller Jewish corner markets, which he’d then place on the hood of his beat-up old Buick and drive up one street and down the other as slowly as possible. He’d always do this with the window down, and do it in a way that the poor and hungry might see him passing and make it to the curb in time to take whatever they needed.

When some hungry man or woman took more than it seemed one person might actually need, Brady never said a word. He’d simply smile, wave, and go back the next day, ask the merchant for another donation, and repeat the process all over again.

Those who saw him regularly said there was no priest anywhere in the city quite like Father Charles Brady, or any man of God whose heart was any fuller than his. Marshall Nelson, a 15th Ward resident who as a youngster had become friends with the priest, and who later traveled with him to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral, would recall Brady reaching into his own pocket on more than one occasion to give someone whatever he had, often his last dollar. More than once he saw Brady take his coat off and give it to a man, for no other reason than the guy looked like he needed it. "Twice I can recall I saw him take off his coat and just give it to a person who happened to be standing there, cold, shaking and looking like he hadn't eaten in days," said Nelson, adding that Brady then looked the man in the eye, patted him on the arm, and said, "God love ya, my son."

Dolores Lynch Brule, who moved into the Ward as a youngster and who knew Brady as far back as the late 1940's, explained to Alethea Connolly, a former nun, for her 1989 biography of the priest: "He was there with neighbors. He wasn't above them or removed from them. If their grass was dying; so was his. If they didn't have much bread, neither did he. If he got feeling down or needed a friend, he often went to neighbors to get sustenance to keep him going."

Brady was forever visiting local hospitals as well, many times unannounced – and always on Sunday night, where he’d spend hours in the children’s ward. He’d just drop by a random hospital and begin visiting its school-age patients, in part because he knew many of them were anxious about being away from home for the first time. Yet, whatever the hospital, and no matter who the patient, Brady always greeted each youngster with warmth and love, and invariably left behind him a wake of hope and joy. As one  physician told Connolly, “When he appeared in the hospital ward, many of the nurses’ aides and orderlies were so thrilled and delighted to see him that you would have thought the Lord himself was in their midst.”

Brady’s empathy and compassion seemed lofty by even saintly standards, much less mortal ones. The priest seemed to get welcomed into hearts and rooms in a way even a few family members did not, much less strangers. Yet, somehow, even the sight of him approaching seemed to warm a child’s heart and calm his or her fears.

When one such child, a young Irish girl named Kathleen, was hospitalized and suffering what would turn out to be terminal cancer, Brady regularly regularly dropped in to help ease the young girl back into God’s arms. Every time he approached her room he’d start singing, “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen,” an obscure German ditty that in the days after World War II had been a minor hit for Bing Crosby. When she’d hear that song echoing down the hall the young cancer patient’s eyes would light up and she’d straighten her hair and try to sit up so she could greet her special visitor.

One day near the end, the priest entered her room, again singing his soft and slightly off-key version of “I’ll Take You Home...” As he sat down next to the bed, he inched his chair closer to the rail-thin girl and took her hand in his. But this time, rather than stop singing, he continued:

The roses all have left your cheek.
I've watched them fade away and die
Your voice is sad when e'er you speak
And tears bedim your loving eyes.

As Brady sang, he looked down and smiled, stroking Kathleen’s head gently. She, in turn, looked up with eyes filling with a mix of peace and acceptance. Brady closed his eyes and continued:

Oh! I will take you back, Kathleen
To where your heart will feel no pain
And when the fields are fresh and green
I'll take you to your home again!

That would be the last visit Brady would make to little Kathleen Brennan as, before the week was out, her long struggle would be over and she'd be on her way home to God. It was no wonder many Ward residents and others who’d seen Brady in action soon began calling him the “Saint of Syracuse.”

One of the great misconceptions about Catholic priests is that they all take vows of poverty. That's simply not true. Catholic nuns take vows of poverty.  Catholic priests, however – or, at least, parish priests – do not.  Nevertheless, even though Charlie Brady never took such a vow, he most certainly lived one.

One time, some three years into his mission in the Ward, the Knights of Columbus at his former parish, Most Holy Rosary, threw a fundraiser on behalf of the Foery Foundation and presented him with a check for $13,000 along with two gifts that they hoped would be both functional and symbolic, given his propensity for expending so much shoe leather in service to the Lord. Those Rosarians presented Brady with a handsome pair of hand-stitched, black leather wingtips from Nettleton, the world-class shoemaker on the North Side, along with a lush, full-length cashmere coat from Learbury’s, the internationally renowned maker of high-end menswear just down the street from Nettleton.

Yet, as tearful as he'd been in accepting those gifts, even before he’d crawled into bed that evening, he’d given both the coat and the shoes to a pair of indigent men whose paths he’d happed to cross on his way home. Brady couldn’t help himself.  He simply was who he was.

The Bishop Foery Foundation, as Brady's new home was now called, was a dog-eared abode on Foreman Street, on the near East Side. The sturdy red-brick structure housed a small, functioning library, a kitchen, a bathroom, two meeting rooms, and a comfortable but modest living quarters on the second floor. In those early days, the foundation served as home for a number of pro-social initiatives, most designed to bridge Syracuse's white and black worlds. Preeminent among them was the local chapter of a group called the Catholic Interracial Council, which once a month brought together blacks and whites of all ages and walks of life. At CIC meetings, members would explore new and different ways to elevate the level of racial discourse in the city. In its early days, the CIC, like so many initiatives Brady channeled through the Foery Foundation, was all about fostering mutual respect, dialogue, and understanding between the races.

By the late 1960's, however – particularly as racial tensions began to heighten in the city – the Saint of Syracuse became almost obsessed with protecting the fraying little patch of real estate his flock called home. And the deeper into the decade it got, and the wider the rift became between Syracuse’s black and white worlds, the more Charlie Brady dug in his heels.

As a result, by the time the 1966-67 basketball season kicked off, and by the time Brady had emerged as a fervent and outspoken opponent of social injustice, the kind raining down on the 15th Ward – including its systematic razing at the hands of politicians, all of whom were white, and many of whom, it’s fair to say, had rarely, if ever, set foot in the place – at least a few Catholics in Syracuse's Parochial League neighborhoods had already started to view Father Brady in a whole new and, perhaps, harsher light.

 

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

 

For nearly three years following his return from the South Pacific, Charlie Brady, in addition to his advocacy work, spent considerable time and energy trying to convince the pastors of the Parochial League to open their doors and begin admitting students of color. It was their duty as the human incarnation of Jesus, he told them, as well as their moral obligation.  Regardless, and as well intentioned as they may have been, for those same three years Brady’s best efforts bore little fruit.

But then, in the Spring of 1947, Jackie Robinson did the what amounted to the unthinkable.  He broke baseball’s color line and, in doing so, changed America forever. When Robinson did that, and when he laced them up for the Brooklyn Dodgers on Opening Day that April, suddenly the notion of a black ballplayer in the Parochial League didn’t seem quite nearly as far-fetched.

As for Walter Foery, as socially and religiously conservative as the bishop might have been, he was no fool. The head of the Syracuse diocese quickly saw the integration of his beloved Parochial League as something of an inevitability. The question for him was, did he dare openly promote the integration of Syracuse’s Catholic schools now, or did he wait until the parade had fully formed and then, when the time came, jump out in front of it?

Yet, even as a handful of forces remained at work throughout the city in the Spring of 1948, all of them directly or indirectly working on behalf of the full-scale integration of the Parochial League, the final decision to integrate may have been one based, not on religion, or race, or even morality, but basketball.

That’s why the brawny teenager, a junior, ultimately selected to break the league’s long-standing color line, also happened to be one of the most talented basketball players in town. That young man would end up going to St. John the Evangelist on the city's North Side, along with his kid brother, who at that time was in the 8th grade and was, himself, a terrific player. On top of that, for three or four years running, whenever a child of color happened to enroll in a Parochial League school, it usually turned out that the child was a combination of two things: one, he was generally male; and two, he always – always – possessed an ability to every so often perform magic with a basketball in his hands.

And maybe that was just as well. After all, Syracuse was a basketball-crazy town, and what better way to get certain racists and knuckle-draggers to swallow the bitter pill of integration than to have a young man show up for the first day of school carrying with him, not just a pile of textbooks, but the promise of few more wins for the home team?

From the inception of the Parochial League in the 1930’s through the 1947-48 season, the league had been comprised of eight (then nine) all-white teams from all-white schools. And while, top-to-bottom, the quality of play was consistently as strong any conference in Central New York, the play at the top levels of Syracuse’s City League – or at least one school in that league – might have been a tick higher. Central High, on the western edge of the 15th Ward, had been fielding racially mixed teams for a decade and the Scarlet Lancers’ brand of basketball was fast and furious, reliant as much on strength, quickness and athleticism as offensive patterns and well-executed plays.

While the Syracuse City and Parochial League champions never regularly met prior to the creation of the All-City game in 1959, following the 1943-44 season the governing bodies of the two leagues did manage to orchestrate a one-off quasi-championship. In that affair, Central – with four black kids in its starting lineup and led by a lightning quick guard, Donald “Pee Wee” Caldwell, dismantled the Parochial League champs, Most Holy Rosary, and in doing so made the Heightsmen look slow and overmatched.

By the summer of 1948, however, things had started to change. Not only was Father Brady now a missionary to Syracuse’s few thousand “Negroes,” and not only was there an entirely new generation of forward-thinking priests on the city's front lines, but just a year earlier Robinson, the future Hall of Famer, had broken the most odious and conspicuous color line in American sports, the unwritten law banning blacks from playing Major League Baseball.

Those factors led many in the diocese to believe the time had come to introduce African American players into the Parochial League. Technically, the diocese's schools had already integrated, of course. In 1944, two young ladies of color, Dolores Lynch (from the 15th Ward) and Celia Jones (from Nedrow, on the city’s far south side), enrolled in grammar school at Cathedral and St. Anthony's, respectively. And while each found the experience trying and each was regularly subjected to racist language and taunts (from students and teachers alike) – so much so that Dolores soon transferred out of Cathedral – much of that racism was confined to those two institutions and went unreported in the local press. As a result, the general public remained largely unaware of the fact that a pair of traditionally all-white Parochial League schools had already opened their doors to Negro children.

A varsity basketball player, however, would be an entirely different matter, and those inside the chancery offices knew it. They understood full well that many reporters would cover the integration of their Catholic league much like they’d covered the breaking of baseball’s color barrier. As a result, those insiders were going to need a special young man (or a special handful of youngsters) who’d be able to withstand the scrutiny and harsh spotlight of the press and fans alike; a young man (or men, if it came to that) who had the ability to rise up and become, in essence, the Jackie Robinson of the Parochial League.

One day, a St. John the Evangelist parishioner named Art Young, a pressman on the graveyard shift at the Post-Standard, who picked up a few extra dollars working part-time at the local Boys Club, decided to watch his son play some ball in the facility’s gym. Young, who played semi-pro ball for years, still loved the game and loved, especially, the chance to uncover young, upcoming talent. He was duly impressed that day by what he saw, a dark-skinned boy of particular size and strength named Alvin Nelson.

Ironically, even before he could say anything to his son that night about what he'd seen, Billy Young started in over family dinner talk, running a blue street about this kid at the Boys Club, a kid so strong and quick that he was wasting his time in the City League. He ought to be playing in the Parochial League, said the young man, at that point a sophomore at Evangelist. The Youngs, in fact, were members in good standing of St. John’s, despite living in St. Vincent’s parish and just a few blocks down Teall Ave from the church.

A few days later, thinking again about what Billy had said about his "colored" Boys Club teammate, his prodigious talents, and his playing in the Parochial League, the wheels started turning in the pressman’s head. In short order, Young invited Nelson over for dinner with Billy and the rest of his family. When he showed up that night, however, Al Nelson didn’t come alone. In tow, he brought along his little brother, Marshall, a kid significantly smaller and almost four years his junior. Both boys were exceptionally polite at the dinner table, and always said "please" and "thank you." They both wore clean, pressed shirts and smelled of a hygienic mix of Dial soap and Ipana toothpaste. That very same dinner ritual would repeat itself two weeks later, then again two weeks after that.

In time, and the more Art Young got to know Al Nelson, the more he grew convinced. This was the kid. So, one day, the amateur scout got on the phone and placed a call to Ruth Nelson, Al and Marshall’s mother. At that point, Ruth was a single breadwinner trying her best to put food on her table and keep a roof over her family’s heads. She did this mostly by counting pennies and accepting whatever work she could find as a house cleaner. The oldest Nelson was enrolled at Central High, just across the street and a block or two west of her small flat on Adams. Ruth told Young she’d been concerned for some time about the quality of education Al was getting at Central. She’d been dreaming for months about being able to send her oldest boy to a better school.

“Would it trouble you at all if it was a Catholic school?” asked Young.

“I don’t care. I really don't. I just want my boy to get the best schooling I can give him, regardless,” said Mrs. Nelson. “But I have to tell you, Mr. Young, I’m truly sorry. I am. But I just cannot afford to send my Al to a private school. Heck, I’m barely getting by as it is now.”

“Let me worry about that,” Young assured her.

The next thing Young did was set up a meeting with the pastor of St. John the Evangelist, Monsignor Christian. He told Christian he wanted to discuss integrating the Parochial League, and suggested he ask a few leaders from the diocese to join them. It’s not known who else was at that meeting, but they most certainly included one or two of the members of Foery's inner circle.

At the meeting, Young made the pitch that he'd uncovered what he believed to be the ideal kid to break the league’s long-standing (and largely unspoken) color line. Even if he wasn’t Catholic, the kid was smart. He was tough. He had an emotional maturity that belied his years. And he came from exceptional stock in that his mother was a rock-solid, hard-working woman who only wanted what was best for her son.

More than anything, Young continued, Al Nelson could play. He could really, really play. And in a basketball-loving town like Syracuse, he said, the power of such a gift should not be taken for granted. Because, regardless of what biases a few random and hate-filled parents or kids might hold against the Negro race, he explained, there was a good chance they'd overlook them if the young man breaking the line is smart enough, respectful enough, and above all, could play.

Eventually, Christian and the members of Foery’s inner circle decided. Young was right. This was the kid to carry the mantle for his race, the kid they wanted to quietly put to rest the Parochial League’s darkest and dirtiest little secret. So that was how Al Nelson, with a big assist from his little brother, Marshall, helped do something in the Fall of 1948 that two years prior had seemed all but inconceivable in Syracuse.

The Nelsons lived at the time just across from Pioneer Homes, a small mostly Jewish community that would in time prove to be a contradiction in terms: a livable, neighborly and, ultimately, highly successful housing project. Construction of Pioneer Homes, at the time one of only three such federal housing projects in the U.S., began during the Depression and was completed in 1941. In fact, the experiment in clean and safe inner-city housing carried such hoopla and came with such high anticipation, that the day of the christening the ribbon was cut by the first lady herself, Eleanor Roosevelt, who flew into Hancock Airport to do the honors and make a speech on behalf of her husband’s vision for a rebuilt and re-energized America, starting with its inner cities.

The modestly sized sprawl of brick, two-story walkups – a community soon known to locals as “Brick City” – was a radical idea in urban living. Built with New Deal money (around New Deal concepts) and under the auspices of the Federal Works Agency, Pioneer Homes, like similar projects in Philadelphia and Atlanta, was FDR's attempt to stem the tide of sprawling, cancerous ghettos that had taken root during the Depression and now threatened to eat away at the core of some of America’s most critical industrial hubs, such as Syracuse.

Pioneer Homes had taken the place of a dozen or so blocks of decaying, rat-infested clapboard homes in the 15th Ward and provided many of their displaced residents with clean, sturdy and healthy alternatives for housing. Initially, Pioneer Homes was heavily filled with Jews from the Ward (with only one cul-de-sac on the far corner set aside for a number of carefully screened African American families; most of whom – it was often noted by other African Americans – were light skinned and well-spoken, or, in their words, "high yella”). Eventually, however, much like the rest of the Ward, the Jews slowly started moving to greener pastures east, and as they did, almost overnight Brick City opened its doors to African Americans of every hue and shade of darkness.

The Nelson family had lived across from Pioneer Homes since its inception and had witnessed first-hand its evolution from a mostly Jewish to an all-black enclave. And while the oldest boy, Al, had a number of Jewish friends, and had met more than his share of white boys through basketball, his remained a world dominated almost entirely by black faces. Few African Americans in the Ward ever ventured far from the safety of its borders; if, indeed, they ventured out at all. Instead, many – particularly those living in the relative shelter and comfort of Pioneer Homes – viewed the bustling, thriving, mostly white world outside their complex with a mix of curiosity, wonder and envy.

What’s more, many of those same African Americans viewed the lily-white Parochial League as something of a garden of hardcourt delights, an idyllic and almost perfect basketball Garden of Eden, brimming with great teams, packed-to-the-rafters gyms, and wildly competitive Friday night barn-burners. At least in that sense, they were right.

That's why, when word started spreading in the Ward that tough-as-nails Al Nelson of Central would be suiting up the following season for St. John the Evangelist in the Parochial League and competing against some of the city’s best white boys, it was as though Jackie Robinson himself had decided to lace them up for St. John's. The news was that big and that momentous for the men, women and children in Syracuse’s 15th Ward.

That's also why, when Al and his little brother, Marshall (three years younger and just entering 8th grade), set off for St. John the Evangelist for the first time on the morning of September 7, 1948 – each in a brand-new suit bought for them by their mentor and now surrogate father figure, Art Young, they did so with as much fanfare as the humble little 15th Ward had ever seen.

As the two well-scrubbed, well-prepped young men worked their way, side-by-side, past Pioneer Homes and up State Street toward the near North Side that morning, some residents of the Ward raised their windows and shouted encouragement. Others stood on their stoops and applauded as the boys passed, the two smiling shyly and gently nodding their appreciation. Others still – mostly kind, motherly types – called the boys over and handed them brown paper sacs filled with sandwiches, fruit and home-made cookies. Some even quietly slipped a sweaty palmful of nickels, dimes, and even a few quarters into the boys' pockets.

And this just didn't happen that first day. It happened time and time again that first month, regardless of how early the hour or nasty the weather.

Overnight, the Nelson boys, particularly Al, became honest-to-goodness Ward celebrities. So much so, in fact, wherever the older Nelson went within its borders, someone – often a complete stranger – would invariably approach him to offer congratulations. Often, he’d be asked for an autograph, or to pose for a snapshot by an admiring fan. And the very first time he snuck into the Penguin Lounge with a beautiful young lady in tow to listen to some jazz and enjoy a little taste of adult life, his cover was blown as soon as he was recognized by the emcee, who asked the underage boy to stand and take a bow from the appreciative audience.

Al Nelson, of course, had been prepared for the responsibility of his small but historic undertaking. All that summer, both he and his brother been talked to at length by any number of people – their mother, Art Young, Father Brady and other Catholic priests, and various adults from the Ward, the Dunbar Center and the Boy's Club. They two had been told, much like Jackie Robinson had been instructed by Branch Rickey, that it was essential to understand that a handful of ignorant and hateful people were going to give them a hard time, as well as say and do any number of bad things. For that reason, the boys had to prepare themselves for what was to come. But above all, they would each have to learn to turn the other cheek and refrain from saying (or doing) anything that might give those opposed to their playing for St. John's a reason to feel justified.

"It's important that you boys be a credit to your race," Al and Marshall were told one morning that summer by Ruth Nelson as she scrambled some eggs for breakfast. It was the first time they’d ever heard the phrase, but it would not be the last. In fact, the pair would hear it over and over in the days and weeks ahead, often times from people they hardly even knew. Wherever they went that Summer, whatever the circumstances, almost every conversation with a grownup would invariably, at one time or another, include the odd coupling of the words, "credit" and "race." In fact, that phrase came up with such regularity, and made such an impression, that both Nelson boys would carry it deep into their adult lives.

For two “Negro schoolboys” in the Summer of 1948, those five words – a credit to your race – were simultaneously cryptic and crystal clear. Because while neither Al nor Marshall Nelson might have been able to explain exactly what that sequence of words meant, especially given that neither had ever given much thought to "race" (or even "credit," for that matter), deep down inside each understood its implication.

Years later, Marshall would recall those days, and contend that, for all the support he and Al received from grownups in and around the Ward, the most important person (beyond their mother) in helping them get through the emotional ups and downs was Jackie Robinson. When the Dodger legend broke baseball’s color line the previous year – just months removed from having played games in Syracuse and months after having wandered the streets of the 15th Ward alone at night, a block or two from where Marshall and his brother had grown up – he not only changed the country, he established a pattern of behavior for ground-breaking African Americans that would stand for generations. As he would say, "Jackie was such a hero to my brother and me, and though we didn't think of our going to St. John's as anything historic at the time – after all, we were kids – we really did try to act like he did and we thought about him at lot, especially as we lay in bed the night before the first day of school.”

The Nelsons were a study in contrasts in many ways, not the least of which was the fact that Al was a broad and muscular force beneath the basket and Marshall, when he made varsity two years later, a lightning-quick guard. Al was also taller than his brother, and outweighed him considerably. In fact, the older Nelson looked more like a linebacker than a basketball player. But for all their physical differences, the most compelling distinction had little to do with appearance. It had to do with personality. Al was a thoughtful but resolutely quiet kid who remained deeply cautious around strangers, something that on the surface could make him seem shy, cold or lacking confidence. It was only when one spent any time with Al Nelson, that it became clear he was anything but.

Marshall, on the other hand, was an outgoing youngster with extraordinary people skills and a natural predisposition for leadership. The younger Nelson had no trouble talking to people, regardless of age, race or station. What’s more, unlike his brother, he actually relished doing so. In fact, his skills would soon prove so evident that in 1951, just three years later, he’d start at point guard for the St. John’s basketball team and quarterback the school's 6-man football team, both of which won Parochial League titles. And the following year, he’d play shortstop on the baseball team, leading St. John’s to a championship there as well.

After high school, Marshall would go on to earn a degree at a mostly white private college in Pennsylvania, secure high-profile positions with the New York State Department of Labor and Niagara Mohawk, the local power company, become an outspoken advocate of civil rights and an early champion of affirmative action and workplace diversity, be honored with a scholarship program bearing his name, and serve in multiple community leadership roles, including a tenure as president of Father Brady’s Catholic Interracial Council.

It is not known, even now, whether or not the 1948 arrangement between Ruth Nelson and the diocese for her oldest to break the league’s color line and attend St. John the Evangelist was contingent on her baby boy going along for the ride. But if that were the case, such a package deal certainly made a lot of sense. For throughout their schoolboy days, and continuing into adulthood, the quiet and soft-spoken Alvin often let his kid brother do his talking for him, especially in mixed company. And Marshall, who looked up to his brother and deferred to him, accepted the responsibility of being Al's voice as though it were part of some unspoken code in the Nelson family.

Al Nelson's two years of high-level varsity basketball at St. John the Evangelist were as successful as Christiansen, Foery, Sammons and others in the chancery could have hoped. Not only did he perform better than advertised on the court, but his transition to the Parochial League was relatively smooth.

Oh, he was called "nigger" any number of times, and he took more than his fair share of vicious elbows (particularly during games against St. Patrick's, a team he’d later contend in a moment of unvarnished candor had more than its share of “Irish punks"). But during his first year as a Parochial Leaguer, there were no bloody fist fights, no protests, and no outward demonstrations of hatred. There were no confrontations in dark alleys, nor any rocks thrown at him. Nor, to the relief of all concerned, were there any death threats, direct or otherwise.

Years later, the older of the two Nelson boys would look back on that 1948-49 basketball season and contend one of the reason there were so few incidents and such a high level of tolerance – at least on the part of the Parochial League players who opposed him on the court – was due in no small measure to the teachings of the institutions that comprised Foery’s league of parish-based schools. "In the Parochial League, we were constantly being told by nuns and priests that all men are created equal and we're all children of God," said Al Nelson. "And when you hear something like that five days a week and every Sunday at mass, pretty soon you start believing it."

Not incidentally, the two boys became so steeped in Catholicism that just a year later, in 1949 – Al’s senior year and Marshall's freshman – they converted and were baptized by Father Nicholson, a somewhat gruff and hyper-competitive priest who doubled as St. John’s athletic director. Meanwhile, serving as the boys' godfather that day was the white family man, the full-time ink-jockey, full-time Catholic, and part-time basketball-loving birddog, Art Young, who months earlier had set the wheels in motion.

 

 

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It was just a one-block street, but for many in Syracuse’s 15th Ward it was so much more. Renwick Place was a clean, comfortable and well-maintained tree-lined street that, on its own, could stand alongside any block on any street in almost any neighborhood in the city. In fact, within the Ward and among its poorest families, families like the Brelands, Renwick Place became known as “Sugar Hill.”

Its residents were not, unlike the bulk of those in the Ward, renters or collectors of government relief. Almost to a family, they were breadwinning homeowners. They were proud and landed citizens of Syracuse. Jews and blacks alike, side by side, these Renwick Place residents were folks who mowed their own lawns, trimmed the hedges, and weeded the flower beds. A number of them had saved their money, little by little – many while living just blocks away in Pioneer Homes – and now all held mortgages, paid property taxes, and owned a few hundred square feet of the American dream right smack in the heart of the most economically challenged and physically blighted neighborhood in the city.

Jackie Robinson might only have been in Syracuse three times in the summer of ‘46 – twice during the regular season, and once for the finals of the International League’s Governor’s Cup – but each time he went there, and each time he laid his head on the pillow at night, he did so at the home of former Negro League player Jimmy Reels, who lived on Renwick Place.

During final days of World War II, nine-year old Milton Fields, as he would remember decades later, was playing football in the street when his mother, Viola, ran out to announce to him and his friends, with tears running down her face, that Japan had surrendered. It was a Norman Rockwell moment if ever there was one, yet it didn’t happen in some white neighborhood on some leafy street in some verdant part of the city. It happened in an oasis of Middle America in the heart of Syracuse’s poverty stricken 15th Ward.

Among the prominent families who called Renwick Place home were Julius and Althea Reeves. Althea, in time, would buy Aunt Edith’s Luncheonette, a southern style restaurant that was, arguably, the most successful black-owned business in the Ward. Meanwhile, the Reeves’ son, Norman, would prove to be an alpha dog among alpha dogs. Norman was smart. He was intellectually curious. He played piano, both classical and jazz. He appreciated fine art. He read books. He was an industrious entrepreneur, even as a boy. But, above all, he was one of the finest football and basketball players many had ever seen.  What's more, when he entered a room, people of all kinds – men and women, young and old – were drawn to him.

So, when Al Nelson broke the Parochial League color line in 1948, the following school year – at the urging of the Ward’s patron saint and protector, Father Brady – Norman chose not to go to Central, like the rest of his classmates. He chose, instead, to enroll at St. Lucy’s, two miles or so down Adams, west of the Ward; a distance he’d walk alone twice a day, every school day, for the next two years.

At St. Lucy’s, Reeves reached full blossomed, becoming a league-wide basketball and six-man football phenomenon, and dominating in both sports. He learned countless things he’d never known, much less considered before, pushing himself intellectually, spiritually, socially and physically in ways he’d never thought possible.

Among those who had the greatest impact on Norman Reeves during his high school days was a stern, conservative and middle-aged priest named Jeremiah Davern. Father Davern was, in many ways, a product of his times. With his country’s noble and well-defined wars in Europe and Japan now a memory, and with a newer, murkier and less-defined conflict smoldering on the horizon – in the form of the “Cold War” against the Soviets – he, like others, lived in constant fear that the insidious encroachment of Communism was going to prove as much a threat to Catholicism as it did to democracy and his country’s way of life.

For that reason, Davern viewed the budding decade of the 50’s as critical to the future of Western culture. He envisioned a much more active role for Catholics and the Church. Like millions of Red-obsessed citizens across the country, he believed Communist propaganda would soon find its way into movies, music, books and television, and that subtle and insidious pro-Red messages would soon threaten, not just the country, but religion: the very idea of God himself.

To fight this, he told friends and colleagues, it was essential that every Catholic child learn early on to articulate clearly and with deep conviction the basic tenets of his or her faith. If the threat of Communism was to be averted, Davern reasoned, the most important weapons against it would be words, especially spoken ones.

In Davern's mind, the ability of Catholics to defend their faith, and to do so in front of individuals and groups alike, would soon be every bit as critical to the long-term sustainability of American ideals – especially the freedom of religion – as military might, diplomacy and espionage. That's why Davern urged his pastor to have St. Lucy’s nuns teach public speaking as part of English classes, and have students of all ages regularly deliver oral presentations to classmates on various issues, particularly matters of faith. Soon, the Lucy’s nuns started doing just that.

It took two years, but eventually a couple of other Renwick Place boys followed Norman Reeves’ footsteps and, likewise, enrolled at St. Lucy’s. Both were African American and, like Reeves, both were exceptional athletes. This was especially true of one of them, Ormond Spencer, a shy and somewhat introverted youngster who, in the two years Reeves spent dazzling Parochial League fans playing for St. Lucy’s, had physically matured and, as an athlete, evolved into a full-fledged 15th Ward basketball prodigy.

The other, Milton Fields, may have been the more outgoing, and certainly the better student, but Ormie Spencer was a basketball playing, basketball loving thoroughbred of an entirely different order – not just better than player at St. Lucy’s, or any player in the Parochial League, but better and more exalted than any player in the city.

Before Elgin Baylor, before Gus Johnson, before Connie Hawkins, Dr. J. and David Thompson, there was a high-flying circus act from Syracuse’s 15th Ward named Ormie Spencer, a gifted, graceful man-child whose leaping ability, athleticism and body control was beyond anything Dr. Naismith could have ever envisioned as he went about drawing up the rules and dimensions of his new-fangled game.

For Ormie Spenser, a handsome, creamy skinned African American boy of long, powerful legs and huge hands, the laws of gravity seemed less actual laws than suggestions. This was especially true at his home bandbox, a gym so intimate that Ormie Spencer could grab a rebound, turn upcourt and, in the space of four or five dribbles, be at the opposite foul line. Time and again, he’d vault skyward, up and out, ball in one hand, eyes and mouth wide open, and his gaze fixed squarely on the goal, while those beneath him scrambled for a little patch of what, for that one crystalline and perfect moment, was clearly his world.

In a matter of months, Ormie Spencer had become a force of nature in the Parochial League, a young man who, even more than Reeves, didn’t just play basketball, but owned it. In fact, overnight he virtually rewrote the definition of what it meant to be an athletic schoolboy in Central New York. Spencer was fast. He was strong. And his hand-to-eye coordination and manual dexterity did their ever-loving best to defy description. Above all else, the kid could soar like no player anyone had ever seen.

Ormie Spencer, in fact, was so gifted and unstoppable in his very first Parochial League season that – as a 15 year-old, mind you – he broke the league scoring record by tallying 45 in a blowout win against St. Patrick’s. That year, he also led St. Lucy’s to its first Parochial League playoff title under coach Armand Magnarelli, and in the process got named to the second unit of the All Parochial team, the first and only time a freshman ballplayer – black or white – had ever achieved that distinction.

In the classroom, however, it was a different story entirely. Whatever dominance Ormie Spencer might have exhibited on the basketball court, it became a sad and distant memory once he sat behind a desk. Spencer was an okay student, though hardly a great one. More than that, however – especially given Davern’s passion for making every St. Lucy’s kid a public speaker – he spent his first three years as a Parochial Leaguer as one of only a handful of black faces in a sea of white Irish and Italian ones, an ethnic and psychological reality that caused him to grow more and more terrified at the mere thought of having to get up in front of others to speak.

In fact, whenever Ormie Spencer’s turn to give a class presentation came about, he’d somehow find a way to be absent that day. Regardless of how long he remained out, without fail his teacher, Sister Mary Gabriel, a sawed-off, no-nonsense Irish-Catholic nun, would always make sure he was the first student to address the class upon his return.

This went on for almost three years. It didn’t matter how long Spencer played hooky or skipped school, or how many days in a row he professed to his skeptical mother he was deathly ill, on his first day back, the young man’s greatest fear was invariably standing there waiting for him in all her black-and-white glory. He’d only have to set one foot in St. Lucy’s and Sister Gabriel, rosary beads jangling menacingly by her side, would stride up and tell Mr. Big Basketball Star in no uncertain terms that he was going to be the very first person she called on that day.

One day, the fall of his sophomore year in 1951, Spencer and Fields – who were also teammates on St. Lucy’s six-man football team – were late for practice. The two had been lax about getting to practice on time, and their coach, a young parishioner named Sal Ciccarelli, immediately ordered them to start running laps. Perhaps a little full of himself in that he was not only the best basketball player in the league, but maybe the best football player too, Ormie balked. He said he and Milt weren’t running. Claimed it wasn’t fair since they were only a few minutes late.

Ciccarelli stared at the boys with fire in his eyes. He was livid. Insubordination under any circumstances was frowned upon. But insubordination in football, especially when directed at the head coach, bordered on the sacrilegious. On the spot, Ciccarelli threw Spencer and Fields off the team and sent them home. What’s more, he was backed up 100% by Father Davern and the rest of the priests in the rectory. For the rest of the season Ormie Spencer and Milt Fields were no longer allowed to play football. They’d have to wait for basketball before they could once again lace them up for good old St. Lucy’s.

But a funny thing happened on their way to basketball season. Both Spencer’s and Fields’ grades began to suffer, and did so markedly. Perhaps it was out of laziness, or perhaps it was out of resentment for having been suspended from the football team. Who knows? Whatever the reason, in the fall of 1951, the two boys B’s and C’s on their report cards suddenly started becoming D’s and F’s. So one day after practice, just days before the first game, the pair got pulled into Father Davern’s office. Again. This time Davern informed the two he was suspending them for basketball season as well.

What’s more, for the remainder of that year, he ruled that the two would have to walk down to the third grade to pick up their report cards. There, they’d not only get their report cards handed to them by a nun in front of a bunch of 8 year-old kids, they’d also have to make oral presentations to those kids on the importance of studying hard and doing your homework – the part of the punishment that not only humiliated Ormie, but terrified him as well.

The not-so-subtle message Davern and the leadership at St. Lucy’s wanted to impart upon the school’s 3rd graders – all their students, in fact – was that even a superstar like Ormie Spencer was not above the duties of his schoolwork. What’s more, the fact that these clergy members were willing to not permit the finest player in the city to suit up until his grades improved, even though a year prior he’d led St. Lucy’s to victory in the Parochial League playoffs, was a scarecrow in the field for every last kid in the school. Do your schoolwork and mind your grades, or suffer the consequences.

To their credit, Spencer and Fields didn’t pout or sulk. They didn’t even transfer to Central, as many in the Ward expected. They simply took their punishment and did their schoolwork. They also played a ton of pickup basketball after school at the Boys Club, working on their games, playing nonstop one-on-one, and, of course, getting physically bigger and stronger. As a result, when they returned for their junior year, and with the addition of yet two more kids from the Ward, Malchester (no relation) Reeves and Carl Foy, St. Lucy’s, the poorest school in the poorest parish in the Parochial League, emerged from the boys’ one-year suspension as a full-fledged juggernaut.

Under first year coach, Frank Satalin, a thirty-something one-time Parochial League star who'd grown up to become a mailman, the Lucians hit the ground running in ‘52 and didn’t stop until the season was firmly in their rearview mirror. Satalin immediately became one of the league’s most-basketball-savvy and knowledgeable coaches. He may have starred in an era of controlled play, incessant weaves, and jump balls after every basket. But he took one look at his new batch of colts and decided to put all his preconceived notions about pacing and tempo on the back burner and let his kids do the one thing they did better than just about any group he’d ever seen – run.

Years later, Milt Fields would talk about how they were all chuckling that first day, when their new coach showed up for practice in muddy boots and a mailman’s outfit. Fields said he, Ormie, and a few others kept laughing under their breath at Satalin – this old white guy in the silly uniform – until he opened his mouth and began talking basketball to them. Almost immediately, the entire team realized they’d just struck gold. They’d managed to land themselves a real-live coach with real-live ideas and an understanding of how the game was played; a guy who could not only help them win a Parochial League title, but teach them a thing or two about life along the way.

Under Satalin, in fact, St. Lucy’s didn’t lose a game for almost two years. That first year they went 16-0 in the regular season, the first of only two undefeated teams in Parochial League history, after which they waltzed through the playoffs as well.

Ormie continued to star on the court while emerging, slowly and painfully, from his classroom shell. He still struggled to give presentations, but each time he gave one, he gained a little more confidence. One day early in basketball season – December of 1953, to be exact – he stood up in front of the class and gave a presentation he told them he’d conceived and written himself. He was a senior now. Spencer cleared his throat before beginning and announced to his classmates the title of his presentation. When he was done, the entire class erupted in applause. Some of the boys, much to the chagrin of Sister Mary Gabriel, whistled and rose from their desks, clapping.

Afterward, Sister Gabriel – as always, unsmiling and businesslike – congratulated Ormond. She said he did a fine job and asked him to turn in his hand-written copy to her. Spencer, smiling broadly, placed it on her desk. That night, the nun took the piece of paper home, typed it up on the convent’s creaky old Royal typewriter, and next morning mailed it to the Post-Standard, along with a cover letter she’d composed.

Two weeks later, on the morning of December 30, fueled no doubt by Ormie Spencer’s place among the city’s basketball elite, his essay appeared on the front page of the Post-Standard sports section. It read:

 

Sportsmanship
By Ormond Spencer
St. Lucy’s Academy
Play the game hard, play it to win, but above all play it fair. These should be the first words that American boys and girls hear and they are words that should stick from childhood to old age.

Sportsmen are judged not by appearance, but by performance. We should enjoy victory and learn from defeat. There are no shortcuts or angles to be played, only one’s ability to be proved. This ability is the ability to produce better than the next person, the ability to make yesterday’s records history, and the ability to make today’s records a challenge to overcome tomorrow.

On the basketball floor, in the office, on the football field, in the home, hard-fought competition with fair play has been the backbone of America.

But even more than individual achievement in sports, is the all-important team play, which springs from trust and respect of the other fellow. The sense of responsibility and co-operation created by team play extends from youth to adulthood. So, let this be your standard in any chosen field: play the game hard, play it to win, but above all, play it fair.

Within an eight-year period in the 1950’s, six players from the city’s 15th Ward – Norman Reeves, Ormond Spencer, Milton Fields, Malchester Reeves, Russell Turney and Carl Foy – all graduated from St. Lucy’s as very different young men than they’d been four years earlier when they walked through its front doors for the very first time. They were all Renwick Place kids, to be sure, and maybe that one small inner-city block of high achievement was the original springboard, but thanks to the firm and steady hands of disciplined role models like Jeremiah Davern, Sal Ciccarelli, Frank Satalin and Sister Mary Gabriel, their days at St. Lucy’s clearly helped catapult each of them to greater success in life.

Norman Reeves attended college at Xavier in New Orleans, then came home and helped transform Aunt Edith’s Luncheonette into Norm’s Chili Bowl, the most successful eatery and black-owned business in Syracuse, until it was razed, like much of the Ward, in 1964.

Milt Fields graduated from Clark University in Atlanta and carved out a career in education after returning home to Syracuse; first as a teacher, then as a principal, and finally as a school administrator. Just as the Nelson brothers did at St. John’s three years prior, Fields, likewise, converted to Catholicism as a Parochial Leaguer. And he, too, chose a white man as his godfather. The difference being, given a lack of any better options on the day of his baptism, he asked teammate Chuck Fricano, who he’d pulled aside that day at practice to see if he would do him the honnors.

In 1961, Malchester Reeves – with his lifelong friend Fields acting as his campaign manager, and at just 24 years-old – became the first African American to win an election in the history of Onondaga County, easily outpolling a handpicked Republican seat filler to win the job as County Supervisor representing Syracuse’s 15th Ward.

Carl Foy graduated from Morgan State, moved first to Providence, Rhode Island, then to Dallas, Texas, and in the process built for himself a successful, decades-long career in the airline industry.

Ormie Spencer went to college as well. But after a few months in New Orleans, he came to realize that higher education and living far from his roots were not for him. So, he turned his back on his basketball scholarship, dropped out of Xavier, and headed back home to enroll in the police academy. Spencer went on to become a Syracuse cop, only the second African American to do so. And he was not only exemplary in his duties as a patrolman, he ended up spending the rest of his days as a frontline uniformed cop in the Syracuse Police Department. Long after his workday had ended, Spencer would regularly address groups of inner-city kids, black and white, about the importance of staying in school, staying out of trouble, and practicing fair play, be it in sports or life.

When Ormie Spencer graduated from St. Lucy’s in the Spring of 1954, after the ceremony in the school gym – a tiny wooden palace in which he once reigned as no other athlete before or since – with his cap and gown still on, he sifted through the mob of well-wishers and sought out one person in particular. When he finally found Sister Mary Gabriel alone in a far corner, Spencer approached her and gave her a big, warm hug. Then, with his massive big hands on her tiny shoulders, he held his former teacher at arm’s length and with tears filling his eyes, smiled and said, “Sister, thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

 

 

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