Today's Reading
PROLOGUE
Growing Roses from Concrete
Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete
Proving nature's law is wrong it
learned 2 walk without having feet
Funny it seems but by keeping its dreams
it learned 2 breathe fresh air
—"THE ROSE THAT GREW FROM CONCRETE," WRITTEN BY TUPAC SHAKUR
On a chilly spring weekend in 1991, some of America's sharpest young minds gathered in a hotel outside Detroit. The hall buzzed with chatter as students worked their way to their assigned seats.
The moment the clocks started, the room fell silent. The only sound was click, click, click. All eyes were locked on rows of black and white squares. It was the National Junior High Chess Championships.
In recent years, the tournament had been dominated by teams from fancy private schools and magnet schools. They had the resources to make chess part of the school curriculum. The defending champion was Dalton, an elite prep school in New York City that had won three straight national titles.
Dalton had built the chess equivalent of an Olympic training center. Each kindergartner took a semester of chess, and every first grader studied the game for a full year. The most talented students qualified for lessons before and after school with one of the country's best chess teachers. Dalton's crown jewel was the child prodigy Josh Waitzkin, whose life story would become the basis for the hit movie Searching for Bobby Fischer just two years later. Even though Josh and another star player weren't competing this year, Dalton had a formidable team.
No one saw the Raging Rooks as contenders. As they walked nervously into the hotel, heads turned. They had very little in common with their wealthy white opponents. The Raging Rooks were a group of poor students of color—six Black boys, one Latino, one Asian American. They lived in neighborhoods ravaged by drugs, violence, and crime. Most of them grew up in single-parent homes, raised by mothers, aunts, or grandmothers with incomes less than the cost of Dalton tuition.
The Raging Rooks were eighth and ninth graders hailing from JHS 43, a public middle school in Harlem. Unlike their adversaries at Dalton, they didn't have a decade of training or years of competition under their belts. Some of them had only learned the game in sixth grade. The team captain, Kasaun Henry, had picked up chess at age twelve and practiced in a park with a drug dealer.
At nationals, teams got to keep their highest scores and throw out the rest. Teams as large as Dalton's could drop as many as six scores. But the Raging Rooks barely fielded enough players to compete. Every score would count—they had no insurance policy. To have any shot at success, they would all have to perform at their peak.
The Raging Rooks started strong. Early on, their weakest player upset an opponent ranked hundreds of points above him. The rest of the team rose to the occasion, checkmating foes who were far more seasoned. Going into the semifinals, of 63 teams competing, the Raging Rooks were in third place.
Despite their inexperience, they had a secret weapon. Their coach was a young chess master named Maurice Ashley. A Jamaican immigrant in his midtwenties, Maurice was on a mission to shatter the stereotype that darker-skinned kids weren't bright. He knew from experience that although talent is evenly distributed, opportunity is not. He could see potential where others had missed it. He was looking to grow roses in concrete.
But in the penultimate round of nationals, Maurice watched his team begin to slip. After gaining a lead, Kasaun blundered and barely squeaked out a draw. Another player was on the brink of victory when his opponent managed to capture his queen and beat him. He broke down in tears and bolted out of the room. One game got off to such an ugly start that Maurice walked out of the playing hall altogether. It was too painful to watch. By the end of the round, the Raging Rooks had fallen from third to fifth place.
Maurice reminded them they could control only their decisions—not their results. To catch up, the Raging Rooks would have to win their four final games and pray for the top teams to lose theirs. But regardless of what happened, they were now among the best in the country. They didn't have to win the tournament to win people's hearts. They had already smashed all expectations.
...
