Monitor Spotlight: Pulling Together
The founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, so naturally reached out across barriers of all sorts.
The mission of her international newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, is "To injure no man, but to bless all mankind."
This cover story celebrates the breakthroughs of several Black young Chicago men, one of whom wrote a book in 2020, "A Most Beautiful Thing."
Step in the RR at 340 Springfield Ave. to take a free issue of this Monitor. Or buy a beautiful card with an image of one rowing!
Here’s the article:
Pulling together: Lessons from first all-Black high school rowing team
NEW YORK
Arshay Cooper knew, almost in a single moment, that he had to find a way to write his story.
Over 20 years ago, he was captain of the first all-Black high school rowing team, a crew that launched in 1997 when he was a student at Manley Career Academy High School on the West Side of Chicago, in what is still one of the most violent neighborhoods in the nation.
How could a Black kid like him from the West Side of Chicago, “a war zone” of gang turfs and drug corners, he says, punctuated by the perpetual sound of gunshots and police sirens, discover the most peaceful and restoring moments of his life within the rhythmic pulls of rowing?
WHY WE WROTE THIS
Arshay Cooper remembers the moment he realized he had to tell his story, now both a book and a documentary, because “on the other side of that despair, on the other side of that fear, there is courage and healing and hope and the opportunity to grow,” he says.
“A teacher would always say, ‘Oh, Arshay, you are a walking storm,’” says Mr. Cooper, whose 2020 memoir “A Most Beautiful Thing,” along with a documentary of the same name, has captivated the rowing world and many others this year. “But rowing was the only sport that was able to calm the storm in a lot of us, and it was beautiful.”
Like much of the nation today, the rowing world, so steeped in symbols of wealth and white privilege, has been reexamining its efforts to make college programs and rowing clubs better reflect the full array of people in society
Yet if the story of the nation’s first all-Black high school rowing team offers a glimpse of how to make these efforts work – launching Mr. Cooper, too, as an eager ambassador for a sport that remains overwhelmingly white – it began more simply. It was just an effort to reach out to students who looked like him, who were enduring the same kind of despair he had growing up on the streets of Chicago.
This cover story celebrates the breakthroughs of several Black young Chicago men, one of whom wrote a book in 2020, "A Most Beautiful Thing." Step in the RR at 340 Springfield Ave. to take a free issue of this Monitor. Or buy a beautiful card with an image of one rowing!