The city of Memphis played both a poignant and tragic part in Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. It’s where King would deliver some of his final speeches, including his eventual last speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”
It’s also where King would be tragically assassinated, on the second floor of the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968.
In attendance for one of King’s penultimate speeches in Memphis at the historic Mason Temple Church of God in Christ were the grandfather and uncle of Chicago Sky head coach and general manager James Wade. During the speech, King advocated for the workers of the Sanitation Strike whom he marched and protested with.
“They were actually there,” said Wade.
The annual commemoration of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday also marks a time of personal reflection for Wade. His life experience growing up in Memphis was impacted by, and even directly connected to, the sacrifices of civil rights leaders like King and other members of the movement.
Now as a father, Wade is looking to soon impart that experience and history on his son, whom he is raising outside the United States in France.
Said Wade: “You just try to show your son the way the world should be and understand the pain and scars that you had growing up.”
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As a child growing up in Memphis, Wade attended a predominantly Black elementary school just up the street from his house. Being around other Black kids was all that Wade knew, and he loved it. Growing up in the city during that time, the area was still profoundly segregated. Residents didn’t live in diverse neighborhoods, a result of redlining and discriminatory housing policies.
“It was either one or the other,” James said. “I was basically in like my little world with people who were African American. It’s something that I didn’t know anything about.”
But Wade’s experience shifted when he learned his elementary school would be closing. He and his classmates would instead be bused out to the eastern remnants of the city to a brand new, predominantly white school.
“It was very different for a lot of my classmates to adjust because we just felt like we were in a different world,” Wade said. “It was teachers that we really didn’t identify with. We went from being a majority Black school to being bused out and now we were the immediate minority and it took us a little while to adapt. … You could feel the unease and you could feel the tension.”
Wade struggled, for an extensive period, to acclimate to his new surroundings. It got to a point where Wade’s response instead was to act up at school. Wade’s view, however, began to shift starting when he was in the eighth grade. First, by a Black teacher, Ms. Caldwell, who Wade said would introduce him to important African American figures, like King, in American history. It was also during this time that Wade would have conversations with his family about the civil rights movement, hear stories from his relatives on their experiences living in Memphis and even how he had his own direct connection to the movement.
It was in conversation with his uncle in which Wade learned that he was a second cousin of civil rights activist Daisy Bates. Bates was the president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP in the 1950’s and played an integral role when the Little Rock Nine integrated Central High School in 1957. Bates helped to recruit the students that would make up the Little Rock Nine and her house served as a headquarters during the attempted integration.
“She was pretty much a hero and I didn’t know that we were kin to each other,” Wade said. “I was having a hard time going to that school and I didn’t know that they had to fight for us to be integrated. [My uncle] told me that I needed to take pride and show them what I was made of. ”
The stories Wade’s relatives passed down included King. Wade said his father and aunt would speak frequently about the prominent civil rights activist. In addition to attending King’s second-to-last speech, Wade’s grandfather and uncle taught him about the sanitation strike and the Black workers who wore signs that read “I Am a Man” as they, in addition to demanding better wages, also fought for equity and respect.
Hearing these stories and how they have both directly and indirectly influenced his own life led to a change of perspective in Wade. It contextualized the world he lived in. Today, he describes his schooling experience as one of the best things to happen to him.
“They explained to me a lot about what it was like back in those times,” Wade said, “[My uncle] explained to me the influence of acting right and doing the right thing because there’s a lot of people that gave their lives for us to be afforded the same opportunities.
“Every time I act out, it’s me disrespecting the legacy of people that laid down their lives before me.”
the wade family
For Wade, passing down knowledge of Black American historical events to his son, like the civil rights movement and its prominent figures like King, are front of mind. That includes his own family’s history. But unlike Wade’s own experience in grade school, where some of his first introductions to that history came via the classroom, for his son Jet, the teacher will likely be Wade himself.
Wade and his French wife, former WNBA player Edwige Lawson-Wade, raise their 6-year-old son in Montpellier, France, where it’s less likely that the American civil rights movement would fall into his son’s school curriculum.
Wade wants his son to understand the history of where his forefathers come from and the sacrifices they made to ensure that they both had their freedom and freedoms afforded today. But he also wants his son to learn that, despite the progress made by those before him, he needs to have an awareness of the work that still needs to be done in today’s society and its view of Black Americans.
“I have to teach the history because at some time there’s going to come a point where he is not going to be treated fairly and that’s going to be on the basis of his skin,” Wade said. “He can’t let it get under his skin. He just has to learn how to maneuver around that.”
This doesn’t hinge on the hypothetical for Wade. It’s deeply personal and rooted in experience. In 2020, he wrote in detail in The Players Tribune about his experience as a Black man in America, which included an instance while he was home from college and was thrown on the hood of a car and placed in handcuffs by a police officer while attempting to pick up his sister from her high school.
“It’s going to be an important lesson, my wife understands that,” Wade said. “He’s a bright kid so hopefully he’ll be able to apply it and be able to serve as an example and a role model to young kids that come from the same racial background he does.”
Wade raises his son in an environment that differs greatly from the environment of his own early childhood. The family lives in a small, diverse area of Montpellier in the southern part of France. It’s a safe space for Wade’s son, particularly as it pertains to raising a young Black man in the country. Wade is aware, however, that as his son gets older and steps out of his familial sphere, that can change.
“The world isn’t always going to be as safe as this is,” Wade said. Right now it’s a safe place for him. Hopefully it stays that way for a really long time but when he does venture off into the world, which I would love for him to do because that’s one of the best ways you can grow as an individual, I just want him to be ready for it.”
Wade said he worries for his son in the U.S., frightened that “people will see him as something that he’s not,” or won’t allow his son to exhibit the same emotions as a kid who isn’t Black. Wade, who emphasized the love he has for his country, said he has to have special talks with his son, something too familiar to the American Black family today. He added that if he’s in France, those talks don’t have to happen with the same urgency.
Wade referenced the recent killing of Sinzae Reed in Columbus, Ohio. Reed, who was 13 years old, was shot and killed on Oct. 12 by 36-year old Krieg Butler. Butler was initially charged with murder but his claim of self defense led to the dismissal of his charges. The investigation by the Columbus police department is ongoing.
“It scares you because when they show a picture of the kid, he looks like my son. It scares me. It really scares me,” Wade said. “I hope we get to a better place. Right now, I’m really in a place where I’m very cautious about where my son spends time and how he spends his time. Him being able to express his emotions in a good way. I want him to always be able to do that so people won’t have excuses to see something that he’s not.”
Wade has yet to visit the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. He wants his first time visiting the museum to be with his son when he’s older and able to grasp the weight of the experience.
Until then, over time, Wade will teach his son about the history of the movement and the courageous figures at its forefront. Figures like King. He’ll explain to his son why each January, King’s legacy is celebrated in America and how learning about what King and his colleagues accomplished in the past impacts his future – as it did Wade’s.
“I will describe [King] as a visionary and someone who helped us get to the point where we are now and the freedoms that we have,” said Wade of how he’d describe King to his son. “He pushed the envelope because a lot of society in America was very content with the place that we had as being less than human. He was someone that pushed the envelope and didn’t let us sit back.”
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