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Sun Is Setting Over Realm of the Shoeshine
King
By JOHN W.
FOUNTAIN
New York Times
Published: June 3, 2001
Published: June 3, 2001
''Shine?''
the men shout in near perfect unison when a potential customer enters.
Each shoeshine man
smiles a little harder to try to nab the customer and is ready with a shine
rag. Here, in this unpolished, West Side storefront on Central Avenue, known as
the Shine King, the owner, James Cole, claims to be the reigning shoeshine king
of this rather hard-on-shoes town.
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The Dream Struggles on King's Avenue
|
By John W. Fountain
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 18, 1999; Page A1
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 18, 1999; Page A1
In the cold morning mist, The Avenue slowly awakens. The sky is patchy and purplish blue. It is almost 7 a.m. A spotty
trail of men carrying bags and backpacks stuffed with their worldly possessions
heads north on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE toward Good Hope Road.
Traffic crawls. Exhaust pours from tailpipes, from mouths. Up and
down The Avenue, dressed-up women wearing 9-to-5 faces walk in the slumberous rhythm
of the morning toward the Anacostia Metro station.
In a little while, the heavy iron security gates will go up on The
Avenue's beauty salons and barbershops, its schools and churches, carryouts and
storefront businesses. At Clara Muhammad School, the snow-bearded custodian
already has raised the security shutters and turned on the lights.
In the east, a pale orange light breaks the horizon. It means that
life, even on this forlorn side of Washington, soon will take its daily course.
Thirty years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, 70
years after his birth, this street – like many named in his memory – embodies
both the dream and the dream deferred. Life and death, faith and despair,
violence and a tenuous brand of peace coexist in a 30-block corridor east of
the Anacostia River that in many ways is a portrait of inner-city communities
across the nation.
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Dead End
By
John W. Fountain
Special
to The Washington Post
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Sunday, August 28, 2005
CHICAGO—A
midsummer's rain falls upon Emmett Till Road. There is the
swish of cars with glowing headlights on this usually bustling thoroughfare
that seems to move this morning in the somber slow motion of a funeral
procession.
Signs stare
out from the windows of storefronts, offering wigs and "100 percent human
hair." At night, neon-lighted signs illuminate the doorways above currency
exchanges and corner stores that sell malt liquor. Down near where Emmett's
road intersects with Martin Luther King's, a local undertaker has outfitted her
funeral home with bulletproof glass.
They are
signs of the times. And they appear across the South Side of this city that
14-year-old Emmett Till called home, until that night 50 years ago in
Mississippi when he was kidnapped and then murdered, supposedly for whistling
at a white woman. His disfigured face -- swollen like a pumpkin -- was viewed
by tens of thousands who filed past his coffin in Roberts Temple Church of God
in Christ. His mother insisted that the world see what had been done to her
boy. His death and her defiance galvanized the civil rights movement.
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How many victims will it take to prove we value human life?
By John W. Fountain
Chicago Sun-Times
Feb. 13, 2013
Hadiya Pendleton, 15, was fatally
shot Jan. 29 while standing underneath a canopy at a South Side park. This is
another in an occasional, yearlong series that looks behind the number of
murders in Chicago.
If it were Sasha and Malia, instead of
Heaven and Hadiya, would this nation then mourn?
Will we remember through the years,
after all shed tears, candlelight vigils, marches and time, our little girls
who lived and prematurely died?
In time, will we even remember their
names?
Or will we ensure that they died not
in vain?
If little rich girls from suburban
plains were being slain instead of little poor girls in city neighborhoods
where bullets rain, would we then proclaim a state of emergency?
If even an emerald city park, beneath
a green shade tree, were not a safe-haven from the gunplay that ebbs and flows
like the summer breeze, then would we make it stop?
Perhaps if urban terrorists sprang
murderous plots and bullets whizzed up and down tree-lined blocks?
If our daughters were gunned down, even
while at play, even while seeking shelter on a rainy day, what would we then
say?
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What I would do if I were the pastor
By John W. Fountain
Chicago Sun-Times
Jan. 23, 2014
If I were a pastor, I would tear down
these walls. Move beyond the warm sanctuary of brick, glass and mortar. Into
the cold streets and dark subterranean spaces where humans dwell on life’s
fringes, more in despair than in hope.
I would discard the high and mighty
pulpit — if we must gather in so-called houses of worship at all — so that none
are lifted up. Every believer on the same plane. No pomp and circumstance, if I
were a pastor.
I would seek to make the church
touchable again. Willing to touch again. Offended less by the foulest smell of
homelessness and most wretched of nursing homes than by the stench of Christian
elitism and human coldness. Humble. Hungry for souls. Hope-rich. Healing.
Wholly seeking to be that light shining on a hill.
I would teach that pastors aren’t
supposed to fleece, rape or abuse the sheep. That no one “man of God” holds
“the secrets” to prosperity. And that no soul-stirring words spoken by any
preacher are greater than the Word of God hidden in a believer’s heart.
If I were a pastor…
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