A Tale of Three Young Men
A Tale of Three Young Men
Where Are They 52 Years Later
The above photo was taken in the fall of 1972. From right to left, the three young men in the forefront are Ronald Judy, Brian Herron, and myself, William Spivey. We were very sensitive about being called young men and not boys, which was often used as a term of disrespect. The event was a football game at Washburn High School in Minneapolis. Ronald and Brian attended Washburn, and I took the city bus across town to Marshall University High.
It was mostly a coincidence we were standing together. Brian and I were friends from our Black church, where his father was the pastor. Ronald was Brian's friend more than mine, though I knew him. Most likely, I had been on the Marshall-U side of the field until halftime, when I strolled over to the Washburn side to visit with friends there. Washburn won the game; we never beat the much larger school in football or much of anything else in those days.
I first saw Brian when he accompanied his family to our church. His father was one of the finalists to replace Rev. James Holloway at Zion Baptist Church in North Minneapolis. Pastor Holloway had passed away after decades of service, and the final candidates gave a trial sermon at the church before the final selection was made. Rev. Curtis Herron from Kansas City was chosen, and the next Saturday, Brian joined the youth choir, of which I was a member.
Brian was outgoing and popular, especially with the girls. I likened him to the "Son of a Preacher Man" from the song by Dusty Springfield that was popular on the radio then. Brian was confident and always the center of attention, whereas I was shy and insecure. I was jealous of Brian at first but quickly overcame that, and we became good friends. Brian lived about a mile and a half away, and it was common for me to ride my bike to his home during the summer. It was there I met Ronald Judy, one of his friends from Washburn.
Even as a young man, Ronald Judy was serious. Every Black person of my generation was coming to terms with their Blackness. We sang "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" in the choir and meant every word of it. The popular hairstyle was the Afro, and on the same day, we might be called colored, Negro, or Black, and that by other Black people. We got called different things by white people.
What most of us knew little of was our history. The second week of February was now designated Negro History Week nationally, and the same stories of Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution were trotted out along with the safer stories of Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver.
Ronald Judy was the exception rather than the rule; he knew his history and was also actively teaching an African-American literature course at the Afro-American Cultural Arts Center. Ronald spent his free time in high school, buying and reading books from Challenge Books, then the only Black-owned bookstore in Minneapolis. Ronald accompanied his great-grandmother when she attended her W.E.B. DuBois reading circle, listening to them discuss topics of the day. She often told him stories of the Harlem Renaissance and Black intellectuals, including Langston Hughes, whom she knew personally. Most of his family was serious about education, which Ronald inherited.
It was only natural that Ron noticed that the materials taught at Washburn High School were decidedly biased when it came to Black history. He got into trouble for offering a different viewpoint or correcting his teachers. Minneapolis was not immune to the racial violence that erupted in several major cities in the United States in the 60s and 70s, but it was mostly on the Northside. That violence came to Washburn with incidents occurring in 1972 and 1973. Ronald Judy was thrust into the forefront when the Black students asked him to be their spokesperson. The students came up with 12 demands, including a Black asst. principal, more Black teachers, and a Black counselor, many of which were ultimately met.
The local newspapers portrayed. the Black students as agitators, stating they must be influenced by Communists. They said nothing of the harassment and physical and verbal abuse meted out by white students, particularly at the 50th St entrance to Washburn, which white students claimed as their own. The Minneapolis police weren't there to protect the Black students but to demean them. Almost fifty years before George Floyd, the police were little better than the slave patrols they evolved from.
Across town at Marshall-University High, I was unaware of the turmoil at Washburn, even though I had a younger brother at Washburn who never spoke about what was happening at his school until I asked him about it last year. I focused on sports, where I played basketball and baseball and was on the track team. I had always taken the city bus to school, but in my last years at M-U High, Black kids from the Northside were bused in to comply with a consent decree agreed to by the school board. My school was now about 15% Black, a greater percentage than Washburn, which in 1973 had 95 Black students out of approximately 1800 students overall. That was because restrictive covenants until recently had kept Black families from moving into the Washburn district.
My Black teammates and I were concerned when we went to play at Edison H.S. in Northeast Minneapolis but gave little thought to safety when going to Washburn or the two predominantly Black schools, North and Central.
Some players on our sophomore basketball team were called "nigger” by players from West High. Still, generally, racism wasn't as evident in my school, which was the first school in Minneapolis to voluntarily desegregate. I did exceptionally well on standardized tests and was named a National Merit Semifinalist, receiving scholarship offers nationwide. With the advice of family members, I chose Fisk University, an HBCU based in Nashville, where I began my rather late cultural awakening.
Brian Herron's father served as pastor of Zion Baptist Church for 37 years. Most of that time, Brian seemed like the least likely replacement. When the time came. Brian was always an activist, serving two terms on the Minneapolis City Council. During his campaign for a third term, Brian was confronted by the FBI, who charged him with soliciting a $10,000 bribe from a local grocery store. Within weeks, he announced his guilty plea and resigned, ultimately serving a year in jail.
“I have touched the things of this world; I have been places that you’d never want to see and never want to experience. I want people to understand that people don’t have the final verdict over your life. God has the final say-so. And so you can make mistakes, but if you give your life over to God and if you trust him, he can take your mistake and make it work to your good and to his glory.” — Brian Herron
Brian considered his year in prison as a year spent with God. Three years after his release, he became Zion Baptist Church's pastor when his father retired. Brian thrust himself back into city politics by fighting for voter rights. He's also become an advocate for better policing in the community, a position that began forming in his days at Washburn.
Policing and the Church: an Interview with Pastor Brian Herron - Church Anew
In part three of Church Anew's series on policing and the church, we interview Pastor Brian Herron of Zion Baptist…
Ronald Judy was a marked man after his days at Washburn. School administration figures decided to suspend him for his final semester, but he had completed all his requirements for graduation and marched with his class. Ronald learned he was at the top of a list of Black students targeted for violence. His family sent him early to Howard University, where he had already been accepted. After a year, Judy was accepted at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, one of the most prestigious Islamic Universities in the world. Ronald returned to Minneapolis in 1979, completing his degree in Islamic Studies and later his graduate studies at the University of Minnesota after a year in France. Ronald moved to Pittsburgh in 1990, where he taught at Carnegie-Mellon for several years and later joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh in 1994 as a professor of comparative studies in the Department of English.
I have become a chronicler of history and people like my friends Brian and Ronald. I surprised Brian this summer by visiting Zion Baptist Church unannounced while in town for a high school reunion. I hadn't seen Brian for almost 50 years, though we remained connected through social media. He spotted me first and greeted me enthusiastically. I haven't seen Ronald in half a century, but he set the record straight about Minneapolis, Washburn, and Black Lives Matter in a 2020 interview.
Ronald Judy
Growing up in Historic Black South Minneapolis Community in the 1960s and 70s. Building institutions that resist racism…
Coming across the picture of the three of us sent me spiraling down memory lane. Hopefully, the three of us will influence those coming behind us for years to come. None of us have forgotten from whence we came and of our responsibility to teach others.
When I taught American Lit briefly at a college -- was there on a one-year contract subbing for a teacher on sabbatical, I offered some Langston Hughes poetry. My favorite was "I, too" -- "Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am, and be ashamed." To me, that's the line that should bring us together. But it seems the MAGA racists have no shame and can't see how ugly they are. The fact that their sentiments exist is not what is troubling but that it seems to be growing.
I am in amazement,Mr. Spivey. Thank You, so much for sharing a look into your life. Astonishing read, Thank You 🙏 and will reStack, with Humility.