David Caldwell, Jr. - On the importance of history work (clip)

Della Pollock (DP): So say one of your kids–he loves you and you love them–and they say to you, “But Mr. Caldwell, all that’s in the past. Why so worried about that? That’s all passed, that’s all over.” What do you say to them?

David Caldwell (DC): Mmh, hmm. [Pause]

DP: Because, I think that’s how a lot of them think.

DC: Yes, yes. I’m trying to think of the saying, Kathryn, I know you know it. “If we don’t learn from our past, we are doomed to repeat it.” Is that it?

DP: Right.

Kathryn Wall (KW): Mhmm.

DC: Which means you’re going to be on a never-ending cycle. Where you are at right now, is where you’re going to be forever. And not many of us are in good spots where we want to be forever. And I think that’s the biggest thing to tell them, to say. That’s what I would say to them. “Do you understand what’s going wrong? Do you understand what’s right? Do you have a plan? You know, what’s your plan? What’s your idea?” I had no intentions of going to college. You know, one of the things, when I was in the seventh grade I had a teacher ask me–she asked everybody in the class–what they wanted to be. And, I had to think for an answer, [and I said] “I want to be a veterinarian.” She told me to be realistic. Let's go to either the grocery store or the gas station, something that you can do. And as a result, this is right when I had gone to the seventh grade, I was already a year behind everybody else, and I’ll never forget, my mom came up she [the teacher] said, “Ms. Caldwell, I can pass him, but he’s below average. I can pass him or he can stay back and get caught up and learn everything like he’s supposed to. Just let me know what you guys want to do.” And we came home and she [my mother] said, “What do you want to do?”

[Phone rings and call declined; slight pause then conversation continues]

DC: I told her I thought about it and I said, “I want to stay back because I want to learn.” And my dad came in that night [or] that afternoon, and said “I see you want to stay back, you didn’t make your grade” and that was a big thing right then. And I said, “Well dad, it’s not that I didn’t make it, it’s just that I don’t want to go on like I’m going and not knowing what they’re talking about and being behind in class and being laughed at and everything.” He said, “Okay, let’s go fishing.” And I’ll never forget that day, we went fishing all afternoon. Next year, I went in and I’m sitting there listening to the teachers because they put me in a class way back down. They had just closed Lincoln [High] so all those kids came over and I’m listening to the teachers and I’m understanding what they’re saying. And before it was like, you know what 1+1 is but you missed 11+11 and next thing you know they’re talking back 111+111 and you missed that middle part. And I was understanding everything. In just a matter of weeks, I was moved from like seven ‘A, B, C, D’ classes labeled, I was moved from the 7D class to the 7A class in four classes. Teachers were leaving saying, “David, take over the class, teach them math.” And I never knew what it was like to make a 100 or an A. Never knew just to listen. It was such a battle, it was such a traumatic thing, but the first year in the seventh grade, I was a fat kid with pimples and didn’t know anything about PE or I didn’t know what a jock strap was. They said, “you gotta wear a jock when you come…” I had to come home and ask my mom, I said “Ma look, they’re telling me I got to wear [a jock strap], what is that?” She went in my dad’s drawer and got one of his, as you could imagine, and got one of his and that’s what I went in [with]. And that was just, being the oldest, I didn’t have older…anybody to come and tell me those things. I went to my first dance, traumatic again. Then I took the second year–the eighth grade I went and played basketball and by then I had shot up to like 6’2. We went undefeated the ninth grade year averaging twenty-one points a game or whatever, something like that. Earl Bynum was on the team. [Chuckles]

KW: [Laughs]

DC: Had a great team, and it just took off from there. It was always a struggle, and these are things that--. Everybody else has stories but…somebody is going to hear--. Everything I learned, I learned from listening to what other people have done. And hopefully someone will listen to what we’re doing.

DP: Well that’s…yes [chuckles].

DC: [Laughs].

DP: Hopefully. But I hear you on that. I think that–and I’m putting that together with what you said earlier about how you were so interested in the things that didn’t get told, like the stories under the stories under the stories under the stories. So even, I’m flashing back too, to when you’re talking about the Black law enforcement convention, because I didn’t even know that existed.

DC: Yes.

DP: And then I can only imagine, that what would have been said there as opposed to in the office where there are one or two isolated Black officers, and I’m really eager to hear what you heard there as well. But it’s getting below the surface, is I think, what we would all love to do as well, and also, I love hearing this really strong stake in “what do we tell kids?” So maybe we’ll just, following your lead, keep our focus on those elements.