A Hobbs "FAMUly" lesson...

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"Fight and win what'er the battle be!"—The FAMU Alma Mater

I occasionally share some of the wisdom that I picked up from my father, Charles Hobbs, the first member of my immediate family to graduate from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Political Science and minor in History in 1963.

But until today, I've never told the story about how Pop was supposed to graduate a year earlier with the Class of '62.

Pop circa 1961 (left) and 1981

Not long after Pop and his football teammates won the 1961 Black College National Championship with a 14-8 win over Jackson State in the Orange Blossom Classic, several of them participated in a civil rights demonstration; when several police officers got too physical with student protesters, my father didn’t turn the other cheek; Pop defended himself by knocking one officer out before being subdued and arrested by several other officers.

Pop often told me that he had no regrets at the time of defending himself or getting arrested that day, but that he was almost reduced to tears when he stood in Coach Jake Gaither 's office and was told that he had been kicked out of school early in his last semester. Sensing that he may have to move back home to Miami to earn enough money to return to school after losing his football scholarship, God ordered his steps when he was hired by Mr. Ellis Carr to work on campus (where he learned the electrical and painting trades from master electricians/painters), and was fed each day by "Mother" Mariah Whitehurst, who refused to charge him board.

The following Fall, with his football eligibility expired, Pop realized that he had saved enough money to pay his own FAMU tuition, room and board. That same semester he pledged Kappa Alpha Psi, and was named Cadet Colonel in the FAMU ROTC and in the Spring of '63, he graduated, was commissioned a second lieutenant, and signed a free agent contract with the Pittsburgh Steelers! After being cut in training camp, he then reported to infantry school at Fort Benning to begin what would become a 20 year stint in the U.S. Army.

But the first lesson that my father learned and passed on to me as a young man was to to remain "peaceful" during righteous protests—a lesson that I failed my junior year at Morehouse College during the Rodney King riots in Atlanta and failed miserably! Fortunately, I wasn't arrested like some of my Morehouse schoolmates—or my father before me!

The second lesson was that even during life's worst storms, to remember that there are angels unaware who will guide you along the way and his two angels were Mr. Carr and Mrs. Whitehurst. Ironically, when my family moved to Tallahassee in the early 80's, I would become lifelong friends (and later Morehouse Brothers) with Mr. Carr’s grandsons, Richard and Rodney Alan, and his granddaughter, Amy Alan. As for Mrs. Whitehurst, her grandson, the late Christopher Henry, would become one of my very best friends from my first year at Lucy Moten Elementary in 1981, until his last day on Earth in October of '92.

So whenever you see me advocating for any righteous cause, such as the current fight to prevent the MAGA incursion at FAMU, know that "how" I fight will be through intellectual analysis, passionate discourse, my trenchant pen, and by utilizing the courts for legal redress—not my brawn or physical strengths!