Marc J. Spears - The Spencer Haywood Rule: Battles, Basketball, and the Making of an American Iconoclast

This book is dedicated to my wife, Linda, and my four beautiful

daughters: Zulekha, Courtney, Shaakira, and Isis. One Love.

Spencer Haywood

This book is dedicated to my wife, Rishika; parents, Curtis and Carolyn;

and my sister, Courtney. Thanks for your love and support.

Special thanks to cousin Kameron Hay.

Marc J. Spears

To my mother, Robin, and my partner, Annya. This journey, this work,

would not have been possible without you.

Gary Washburn

Contents

1. Cotton

Its horrible to say this, because it was definitely nightmarish to live it, but sometimesoften times in Mississippis dark racist historythe truth hurts:

Picking cotton, basically since he was born, was the foundation for Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Spencer Haywood becoming an elite basketball player on every levelhigh school, Olympic, college, ABA, and NBA.

I came out of the cottonfields, Spencer Haywood said. I grabbed every rebound that came off the backboard. For people to learn how to rebound, they had to work at it. But that shit was easy for me because I had been picking cotton, dragging those sacks, lifting those 100-pound sacks on my shoulders, and dumping them out. I was just cock strong.

I didnt know it at the time, that I was in training as a player when I was picking that cotton, dragging that sack around that was 100 pounds. My legs, for a young person, were really developed.

Spencer Haywood has a loud and booming voice and a personality that can fill up any room. The first day he was heard was on April 22, 1949. This African American infant was born in a Mississippi town called Silver City that had just over 300 people claiming it as residence. Haywoods birth was not documented by the city, Humphreys County, or the State of Mississippi. Rather, a midwife wrote what would be a historic birth down in a Bible that would prove to have more importance to the United States of America than just offering the Lords word.

Silver City. It aint no city, and it aint no silver, Spencer said. When you go outside of the little town we were living in, youre looking at about 150 people.

Unfortunately for Spencer, his dad was not there when he took his first breath.

John Haywood was from the Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area, which is in northeastern Mississippi and was named a federally designated National Heritage Area to commemorate the regions impact on the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. He was a sharecropper and a carpenter who was masterful with his hands. Spencer said his dad made a lucrative living building churches, businesses, and homes for rich White folks in the Silver City area. John was also a fair-skinned, half-Black and half-White man born from a Black mother raped by a White man, Spencer said.

John Haywood also had big dreams in the late 1940s for himself and his children that, under the circumstances, appeared to be supported by Whites in need of housing. Being half-White helped his cause.

He could build anything, Spencer said. My family members told me he used to say, I had my boys. Well have my company and were gonna be the shit . He built houses, churches, Leroys Caf. He just built it and other farmhands would help him on the side when he got out of the field. They needed him, and he was also half-White.

Mr. John was actually doing extremely well for a Black man typically with the most limited of opportunities in a racist state, where many White men had little regard for people of his skin tone. While carpenter John Haywood certainly had the ability to build a large home for his family of nine kids alongside a dirt road, he also had the intelligence to realize it was better to limit his to three bedrooms to keep the local Whites from jealousy and potential retaliation.

You cant build too big because you cant overshadow the people who had less, Spencer said. You couldnt shine on the White folks because they would burn it down.

The stories Spencer Haywood speaks of his father now are not personal experience.

I didnt know nothing about my father, Spencer said.

John Haywood actually died of a heart attack at age 64 in Silver City about three weeks before his future basketball star son was born. With the unexpected death of her husband, Eunice Haywood instantly became a single mother with her ninth child in baby Spencer, who was born prematurely by help of a midwife on his parents bed. She would have later give birth to two more kids, but she vowed never to marry again due to her love for John Haywood.

He was working on a home and he just fell and had a heart attack, Spencer said about his father. My mother was pregnant with me. It was a traumatic experience for me losing him and I am inside her kicking to get out. So I came on the scene a little early. We couldnt go to no doctors. A midwife brought me into the world on the same bed that I was conceived. My mom was worried about this baby because he was puny.

John Haywood stopped sharecropping after becoming successful as a carpenter, according to Spencer, because the demand of his buildings was too high and lucrative. Spencer says the family would have been rich in a major Mississippi town if his father never passed away.

My mom would say that [would have happened] if my father would have moved us to Yazoo City or Jackson, where they really could use his work, Spencer said. He had his whole crew built-in with six boys.

Spencer said that he considered his tough, hard-working, older field hand, 6-foot-4 brother, Joe; his older brother, Andrew; and neighbor and field hand M.H. Ratliff as his main father figures. But ultimately, it was his mother, Eunice Haywood, who raised him and gave him his first dose of confidence.

From jump street she always believed in me, Spencer said. I get emotional when I think about. She would always say I was replacing John as the breadwinner.

Eunice Haywood was from Kosciusko, a small town in central Mississippi built along the Natchez trace that was used by Native Americans and European settlers. Today, the central Mississippi town of close to 7,500 people is more famous for being the birthplace of famed television host and actress Oprah Winfrey and Civil Rights figure James Meredith.

The dark-skinned Black and Native American woman was involved in sharecropping her entire life. She had to drop out of school when she was in the fourth grade so she could sharecrop.

One of Eunice Haywoods two previous children prior to meeting her husband came from a rape from White men, Spencer said.

John and Eunice Haywood also didnt meet organically at church, concert, or some speakeasy for Blacks in the Silver City area. According to Spencer Haywood, White male farmers that ran the cotton fields in Silver City recruited them to work there. He also said that the White male farmers pushed his tall parents to date in hopes of them re-producing large and tall children.

John came to the union with two children already: his daughter, Ollie Mae, and his son, AW. Eunice also already had two daughters, Virgal Lee and Lena Mae. Once they were married, they had (in birth order) son Joe, son Leroy, son Andrew, daughter Lavaughn, Spencer, son Floyd, and daughter Ivory.

This White farmer was trying to get some farm people to do the work, Spencer said. My mom and dad met on Goat Hillabout eight miles outside of Silver Citywhere there was farming of real raw cotton. They met there. They were indentured slaves. They were actually put together by the farmers.