WTTW - The Debate on "Chiraq"

Not a 'dog' story...It's about a boy

A view of Chicago's downtown from the city's West Side where Fountain grew
up and for which he named the publishing company he founded: WestSide Press. 

Part of this week’s column appeared in a column by the author in the Chicago Sun-Times in March 2011.

By John W. Fountain

His name was Rodney McAllister Jr. I became aware of his story in March 2001 while a national correspondent for The New York Times. The 10-year-old St. Louis boy had not come home one evening. The following morning, someone saw a pack of stray dogs making a ruckus at a nearby park. He went to investigate. They were gnawing something. There, beneath a pine tree... a child. It turned out to be Rodney, who, according to officials, was mauled to death.

I quickly made telephone calls and found community leaders and others who questioned how something like this could happen, not in a Third World country, but in a sturdy metropolis, in one of the world's richest countries. That some reportedly heard a child’s screams the night before but never went to investigate made the story even more troubling.

It was clear from my preliminary reporting that there was a story here, about a man-child said to sometimes wear shoes several sizes too big, a boy beloved by his teachers and classmates who had fallen through the cracks. A story about how his death galvanized a community.

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Excerpt

I

 am a sinner. I stand with one foot in each world, one called sin, the other called grace. I stand in the midst of sins I have committed today and yesterday and those I inevitably will commit on tomorrow. And whatever my sins—and they are many—none of them are greater than His grace that by the blood of His Son can make me—us—in the words of a Gospel hymn, “whiter than snow.” I stand because of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—He who remembers when others forget but also He who forgets when others remember. I stand. And yet, without Him, I can do nothing.

I stand here, somewhere on the timeline of Christianity—more than 2,000 years after the Day of Pentecost, 18 centuries after Roman Emperor Constantine the Great placed his thumbprint on Christianity, and many years after the Great Awakenings. I stand somewhere in the afterglow of the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, California, which gave birth to modern Pentecostalism in America. I stand. Between the cries of ancestral slaves in the cotton fields of southern plantations, between my great-great grandfather’s pastoral prayers in Pulaski, Illinois, where he—Burton Roy—migrated from Atlanta, Georgia, after the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation set him free from the bonds of slavery he inherited from birth. I stand.

I stand on the prayers of my grandmother and grandfather, Florence Geneva and George Albert Hagler, who, in 1943 made their way, like millions of southern blacks during the Great Migration to Freedom Land up north—in their case Chicago. I stand as testament to the prayers and faith of the “prayer warriors,” those gray-haired church mothers with whom on Tuesday and Friday mornings at one storefront church or another we petitioned God for my soul, health and future. I stand as proof that God hears even the cries of a ghetto boy.

‘Unpimpable’ to those pastors who prey on the poor

Originally Published Oct. 17, 2013 - Chicago Sun-Times

BY JOHN W. FOUNTAIN 

Unpimpable, I am. Unpimpable by those “pastors” who prey on the poor, who dwell in opulence, or strut like peacocks in the pulpit, wearing flashy designer suits, lizard or gator shoes, their necks dripping with golden crosses. Those who more resemble gaudy pimp-like creatures than humble men of God.

I am unpimpable by those flamboyant pastoral leaders who in an age of a bling-bling Gospel areescorted through the sanctuary by “armor bearers,” wearing two-way radio earpieces and blank faces, as if they are the Secret Service protecting the president. Those pastors who live in suburban meadows while their sheep dwell in urban ghettos.

This is part of an occasional series titled, "Chiraq"

By John W. Fountain

        How to raise a killer: First, fathers, abandon your sons. Never cradle or nurture them. Wholesale kick them to the curb soon after life begins. The sooner, the better.

Never spend time with them, never show them—teach them—what it means to be a man.

Make excuses for your absence: My baby’s mother “be trippin’…”

Never show your son any love. Leave him feeling worthless, forsaken by the man who was supposed to love him first, unconditionally.

Black lives matter?

Why won’t we stop killing each other?

By John W. Fountain

Black lives matter?

What about young black men slain by young black men? Or is it only black males slain by white men?

When will local and national protests begin for the senseless killing of Demario Bailey, 15, shot dead a week ago Saturday by would-be robbers? His four alleged killers look just like him: young, male and black.

Surely they must have seen news of protests in response to grand jury decisions to not indict white police officers for killing Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York. Surely, they must have caught wind of protestors’ chants:

“Black lives matter!”

“I can’t breathe.”

Surely they must have noticed Demario’s chocolate skin and brown eyes. Realized that he was unmistakably their “brother.”