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A Renaissance Man in a Sports Hall of Fame

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By Ernie McCray

One of my most cherished honors is being among some pretty good Wildcat athletes in the “University of Arizona Sports Hall of Fame.”

I’m a member because I could snatch rebounds like a machine and get the ball in the hoop as a routine. But what does it really mean? For me, it hasn’t been something I’ve thought that much about day to day.

But a few months ago I got a little excited seeing a very familiar name on the list of super-jocks who were to join the club this year.

Dave Baldwin is the name. Pitching a baseball was his game. And I’m stoked that he and I are going to be in such a place of esteem together – because we go back before our college days, back to the Class of ’56 at Tucson High. Back to when I was stepping high, doing teenage boy things, testosteroned to the bone.   [Read more…]

Tom Hom, a “Rabbit on a Bumpy Road”

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By Ernie McCray

I just put down a nice read, “Rabbit on a Bumpy Road,” by Tom Hom, a man who was the first person of color to be elected to the San Diego City Council.

That took place back in 1963, a year after I had moved to the city. So I was greatly interested in the book for the history, a history in which, as a citizen, I’m a player.

I was a 24-year-old back then, still getting my feet wet and my mind wrapped around what was going on in my world socially, politically, and otherwise.   [Read more…]

Thinking of Josephine and James and Langston and Other Gay Icons

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By Ernie McCray

After writing recently about a five-year-old girl being kicked out of a Christian Academy, in what seemed to me to be an example of rampant homophobia in the black community, I began thinking “Is it just me?”

Then a childhood friend commented on what I had written with these words: “This is all new to me in the black churches… many gay persons played the music, sang in the choir, helped get those fashion shows together and no one said a mumbling word or they never appeared to out loud.”

What a relief to discover it just wasn’t me who feels the way I do because what my homey had to say is so how I remember things back in the day – so how I happened to live all these years thinking that black folks were okay with folks who are gay.   [Read more…]

“Express Yourself”

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Acknowledging the Playwright Project’s
“Deborah Salzer Excellence in Arts Education Award”

By Ernie McCray

Being recognized
for any contribution
I’ve made to the arts
is like being recognized
for breathing
a breath,
like being identified
for being myself –
as I was raised by a mother
and a grandfather
and a great-aunt
and cousins
and a church
and more than a handful of neighbors
and a teacher or two
at a segregated school
to,
in the spirit of the Golden Rule:
Express myself.   [Read more…]

Do All “Black Lives Matter?”

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By Ernie McCray

Damn. One day I’m writing a piece concerning discrimination against lesbians and gays, making a pitch for us to let the now proverbial Adam and Steve or Alanna and Eve feel at ease in just being themselves.

And the very next day, to my dismay, I hear of a little 5-year-old black girl who is kicked out of a school, the Mt. Erie Christian Academy, because she has two moms.

Whoa, right back where I started from. Another story about “beliefs.” Christian beliefs. But I just have to say I can’t see Christ turning some child away from a school with some lame excuse like “The Bible says homosexuality is a sin,” making that little girl, in essence, a victim of her mothers’ sins.   [Read more…]

I Hope We Can Finally Just Let Adam and Steve Be

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(No Matter What our Beliefs Happen to Be)

This Kim Davis situation is just too familiar for my liking, too much like it has always been in this country based on what I’ve seen in 77 years.

I mean I have no idea what this woman’s work entails in a day. But one of her tasks seems, to me, like a dream job, where all she’d have to do is a little soft shoe with jazz hands and a big smile and sing: “Howdy do. Congratulations, you two. Here’s your marriage license. Toddle-oo!”

But she can only do that for “Adam and Eve.” “Adam and Steve” or any woman whose honey is a she has to be insulted by her for all the world to see because of what her scripture has taught her to believe.   [Read more…]

“Blueprints to Freedom” Made Bayard Rustin Come Alive

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By Ernie McCray

I saw “Blueprints to Freedom: an Ode to Bayard Rustin,” at the La Jolla Playhouse a week ago.

I was never so ready for a play to begin as I was that night because Bayard is a huge hero of mine, someone, whose memory, I’ve cherished for a long time.

To me, he was about as outstanding a human being as anyone could be. Ghandi, personified. So tirelessly alive and brilliant and loving and wise, a master as to how to organize, able to gather what he called “angelic troublemakers” together against all kinds of odds, in all kinds of weather. He brought us the moment when Martin envisioned a world, aloud, where “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”   [Read more…]

There are Reasons for Grampy’s Smiley Face

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By Ernie McCray

I just discovered that National Grandparents Day came and went. I don’t know what that’s all about but it’s gotten me thinking about grandparenting.

I’ve been doing a lot of it lately, hanging out with a little two-year old who calls me Grampy and his little sister.

And my mind goes back in time, to August of ’76 when I became a Grampy for the first time. The journey puts a smile on my face. But I was, in no way, grinning when I got the news that I had a grandchild on the way. I mean, I was 38 and my daughter was 19. Chip off the old block it seemed. But, hey, whatcha gonna do?   [Read more…]

How Can We Call Our Country Great When There’s No Equality and Justice for All?

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By Ernie McCray

Donald Trump, on the stump, has been talking about making “America great again.”

And I’m thinking, again? We were great once and that greatness came to an end? When? I mean, I’ve been hearing about how great America is all my life, with no let up.

And I was a believer for a while, with all the fireworks and all. All the parades. All the “Oh say can you see” at the beginning of games and “God bless America” at the 7th inning stretch near the end.

And we love to say “That’s what makes America great” or “Only in America,” especially when some one of us: takes to a stage and makes us cry or laugh or jump up and boogie; gives forth with paintings and sculptures that are pleasing to our souls and our eyes; wins a noteworthy award like the Nobel Peace Prize.   [Read more…]

No Differences Between Bernie and The Donald?

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By Ernie McCray

I’ve read comments somewhere out there in social media land that try to put Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the same bag as the perception that there isn’t much difference between democrats and republicans.

Well, I could take both sides of part of that argument but there’s a galaxy of separation between Bernie and The Donald. I mean one’s a progressive minded human being and the other is a narcissistic buffoon.

As to the clown, according to The Atlantic millions of people feel he is the best choice to lead America. Millions more “are motivated by giddyness at the chaotic spectacle of his success” which should involve, it seems to me, adding giddyness to the list of mental illnesses.   [Read more…]

Straight Outta Compton to Right Now

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By Ernie McCray

I saw Straight Outta Compton
the other night.
It was a trip, fly, tight.
Kickass.
Jamming.
Hip.
Got to it
from the git with
“You are now about to
witness the strength of
street knowledge”…   [Read more…]

The Day Nancy and I Got Together

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By Ernie McCray

I’ve been thinking about my dearly departed Nancy with August 23rd a day away as I write. It was on that day, in 1975, forty years ago, that I moved in with her, in her little apartment on 24th and Russ, next to Golden Hill Park.

So I find myself celebrating that day, in my thoughts, remembering with a little quiver, what I had to do to start a life with her: break another woman’s heart, my wife, a woman I loved. If I regret anything in life it’s causing her such misery and pain.

But, especially when I look back on it, I was following my destiny, the dictates of my soul, wherein I knew as instinctively as I breathed, that I had no choice, in the cosmos, but to be with Nancy, that the two of us were soul-mates, destined to be together as the stars are meant to be aligned in the sky.   [Read more…]

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