I recently watched the new Netflix documentary on Mr. T. I admit it was disappointing. It felt thin and rushed to me. The filmmakers clearly had no passion for the film since it failed to capture his nature, his complexities, his faith, his service, the hardships and the depth of the road that he traveled. A 48-minute documentary is not enough to do justice to such a life. After all, this is a man who traveled from the rough and violent housing projects known as the Robert Taylor Homes to the top of the world.
Still, the documentary reminded me of why Mr. T has always been such an inspirational figure in my life, from my childhood even to now. I hold him up as a role model to my young kids at Project H.O.O.D. His life is one of hard work, doing the right thing and having a dream. Those are not clichés or empty slogans. They are the values that create opportunities in life.
Laurence Tureaud was born May 21, 1952, the second-youngest of 12 children on Chicago’s South Side. His father, a minister, left when Laurence was five. His mother, Willie, earned a living cleaning houses in the Lake Forest area of Chicago, and her income to support all her children was supplemented by an $87 monthly welfare check. They were poor, but not in family or spirit. Mr. T talks of how they went to church, loved their mother and stayed away from the gangs.
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One of my favorite Mr. T quotes is, “I was born and raised in the ghetto, but the ghetto was not born and raised in me.” Like anyone in the Robert Taylor Homes, he saw violence and all the things that no child should ever see. He also saw racism. He saw white men call his father a “boy.”
In the documentary, he talks of how his brother went to fight in Vietnam as a Marine and came home only to be called a “boy.” When Laurence was 18, he vowed that no one would ever call him a boy. He changed his name to Mr. T so that the first word out of anyone talking to him would be “Mister.” What he was demanding was the respect and dignity that his family had been denied. He respected himself.
At Dunbar Vocational High School, he became a football star and a city wrestling champion. He did not have a fancy gym to build his muscles. He worked out with his brothers on the concrete around the projects. They did push-ups. They did chin-ups from tree branches. They wrestled one another. They built those muscles the honest way. Mr. T won a scholarship to Prairie View A&M, but that did not work out. He moved to the Loop of Chicago because that is where the money was. For me, that is key because he put himself where the opportunity was. He wound up working three jobs at once, and one of them was as a bouncer at a club.
It was there that he got the news that his mother had been robbed of her welfare money by thugs in the elevator of the projects. They told her to give them her money or they would cut her throat. Mr. T grabbed his shotgun and went into the projects, where he confronted gang members until he found the people who had made his mother fear for her life. After confronting those responsible, he decided to become a bodyguard. He would protect others the way he believed he had failed to protect his mother.
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What I love about this story is that he turned what he believed to be a personal failure into a calling. I don’t think it was a personal failure at all, but what he was trying to do in his own way was make the world a better place. He would use his talents and smarts in that way. He didn’t fall into the gang life or anything like that. He created a new pathway in life instead.
I don’t know where I read it, but I remember the story of when he was nine years old or so. He told his mother, “One of these days I’m going to be big and strong. I’m going to be a football player and a boxer. I’m going to buy you a beautiful house and pretty dresses.” She didn’t laugh at him or mock him. She didn’t doubt him. She instead spoke to him of values and told him that the way to get there was to work hard, save his money and get after it. That’s what Mr. T did. It was those values, not the Hollywood fame, not the gold chains, not the “I pity the fool” line — it was those values that were the engine of his life.
That’s the part that I want my kids to hear. Not the mohawk or the tough scowl. I tell them that Mr. T was once just a child like them, born into a bad ZIP code. But he was a dreamer who had family around him and who never walked down the wrong path or went to jail because he could not bear to break his mother’s heart. That’s how love can save a child.
And I tell them how Mr. T started at the bottom. He didn’t look for shortcuts or get-rich-quick schemes. He believed in himself, and he created his own opportunities. He used sports to discipline himself, he served his country, and he worked as a janitor, gym teacher and a doorman before anyone called him a “star.” He stayed true to himself and made himself so unique that people just wanted to be around him. He was one of a kind and, most of all, he was real, and that’s why the world gravitated toward him.
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We spend far too much time telling the young kids on the South Side that the system or the Man is out to get them. We talk about systemic racism without going anywhere. There’s no hope in any of that. That’s why those conversations just peter out and die when we run out of doom and gloom. And what good does it do to poison a young child’s mind with all that negativity?
That’s why I’d rather talk about South Side heroes like Mr. T. His life gives us the simple but brutally honest lesson: Your circumstances are real, and they may be unfair and stacked against you, but they are not your destiny. You are. Your faith, your work, your respect and the dream that you have for yourself — that is your destiny. You have to do the hardest thing in the world, which is to believe in yourself. If you do, you will reach heights you never knew were possible.
That is the simple truth I tell my kids every day. I even tell that to myself. I know I speak of opportunity all the time, but it is not a political talking point for me. It is the lifesaver. It is the boy who decides that he will buy his mother a house. It is the young man who decides that his circumstances will not define him. It is the man who decides his fate. I pity the fool who looks at Mr. T’s life and still tells our kids they cannot rise.
And, yes, Mr. T did buy his mother a beautiful mansion, complete with an elevator, in the Lake Forest neighborhood where she used to clean houses.
