Karl Moody - A Ledbetter Street Legend by Jolivette Anderson

Karl Moody - A Ledbetter Street Legend 

by Jolivette 'Djali' Anderson (c) September 26, 2020

We all have a place inside of us that takes us to our childhood. The smells, sounds, tastes and other sensory receivers and perceptions offer comfort, solace, laughter, or even tears and a little regret. 

When I think of my childhood in Shreveport, Louisiana, my minds eye takes me back. My mind goes back to farm plows and steam rollers digging and pressing tar covered streets in my neighborhood- the segregated Hollywood Neighborhood on Ledbetter Street.

The families in the Hollywood Neighborhood had migrated from small rural communities to find work. They set about their day to day lives in what academics call "the heteronomative nuclear family. This is  a fancy way of saying a man, woman, and their children live together in a house, in a place that has certain rules and regulations that must be followed. 

We witnessed the good, the bad, the indifferent, and the ugly of the human experience, as all humans do, but there are moments, there are people that capture us, encapsulate us into a space and time that  help to define us and pushes us to imagine the possibilities outside of the places society carved out for our parents to be. Those families gave us what we needed to be good, decent, and kind human beings.

We had heroes and sheroes. We admired, respected, looked up to and loved them because they did something that made us proud to live in our little Black neighborhood. We were proud to say I played at Hattie Perry Park, proud to say I bought coconut cookies from Mr. Buck's front porch store, proud to say I used to wave at Reverend Gant at Calvary Baptist Church, proud to say I went to Hollywood Elementary School, and proud to say I lived on Ledbetter Street.

One of the proudest moments of my childhood, a moment that defined greatness in our imagination was when our neighbor who played basketball for the Woodlawn High School Knights under Coach Melvin Russell created what my dad called PANDEMONIUM in the C.E. Byrd High School gym. 

With seconds left on the clock, down by one point, long before the 3 pointer was a real thing, I sat in the bleachers with my head in my hand, crying because Woodlawn was about to lose a major game. It could have been a playoff, I can't recall all of the details, but what I do remember is that feeling of disappointment that we were about to lose this game. I glanced up through my tears to see my cousin Michael Smith - or that other really tall guy whose name I can't recall - get a rebound from a missed free throw, pass the ball to Karl Moody who took a few steps, aimed the ball for the basket, shoot the shot and the ball dropped with a 'swish' -- nothing but 'net' or ALL DRAWERS as we would say back in the day.

With that one shot, before the buzzer sounded, local TV station filming the final seconds, our childhood playmate and friend became a local celebrity to many, a hero and legend of Ledbetter Street for us. At some point, many of us tried to make the 'Karl Moody Shot' on a basketball court at school or in the gym at Hattie Perry Park.

On September 11, 2020, Karl DeWayne Moody Sr. died. He had been living in Nashville, TN for several years. My brother Jethro who lived in Clarksville, TN would run into him a few times over the years. Karl was four years my senior, the same age as my Cousin Michael and my sister Jackie who played on the girls team that year. 

According to my brother, Karl did not remember him without being prompted to recall his older sister, likely because Karl had gone off to college while Jethro was still in elementary school, but that is the beauty of being part of Black families that occupied a common space, who gave their children common experiences. We looked up to Karl Moody because of that winning shot at the game and the subsequent local fame, but most importantly, what he did with that fame, how that fame motivated all the younger ones in our neighborhood to try to be like him was something he may not have even known. 

He continued to smile, to joke with us and to laugh. He had an inner joy that exuded confidence, pride, self-respect, dignity, and human kindness. He was raised by a loving family and he spread love and kindness to others. These are my memories of the making of a local legend, a Ledbetter Street legend who through his actions gave little Black children in our neighborhood permission to imagine and seek out greatness in the world at home and the world at large.

Rest. Sweet rest Karl Moody. May your soul take flight and may angels greet you on your journey home. I pray the Creator be extremely pleased with your good works and say 'Servant, well done'.

The De-Valuation of Human Labor

We were so large in numbers we became expendable, easily replaced. A whole continent of people could be used to work the land, to be the tools used to get resources that create what human being need to live (stay alive) and to live well (in comfort). Then came greed as by product of human insecurities - the need to feel better than, more important than another. The best ways to feed ones greed is to control the source from which all things come. On Earth, those two things would be God and Land.

The land provides what we need to eat, drink, cover our bodies, protect us from the winds and rains of heaven. All that we put in our bodies to keep us alive come from plants and animals, in its rawest form. The plants and animals require fresh water as so do we.

The supply chain was designed and evolved to give life and sustain our lives and it has been disrespected, ignored, and taken advantage of. Rarely do we think about where our needs come from, the root source of the things we use daily. We have simply been getting what we need, often to the point that excess, because we arrogantly believe it is owed to us because we pay taxes alone.

Paying taxes is a function of every member of a society and each citizen member should have the highest of expectations for a return on the investment of their tax dollars into their local, state, and federal governments. However, the function of the government on behalf of the citizenry has always been fragile.

We are sliding deeper into the realization of our fragility as a nation, true. But, we are also falling deeper into the realization of our fragility as human beings - a fragility brought on in part by arrogance and self indulgence in our belief in American exceptionalism and our pursuit of an American Dream.

Individuals are a part of different kinds of groups. The first being the family.

Families form clans.
Clans from tribes
Tribes form territories
Territories become states.
States become nations.

Tribalism is used as a derogatory term.
American exceptionalism is an insidious form of tribalism. It says that being 'American' makes one special, better than others because material wealth and ideas that have not been fully enacted or attained.

The American Dream is the idea that all people can lift themselves up out of situations to live a life of leisure and comfort and make choices about how they want to function or exist in the world. One can dream while asleep or dream while awake. Sleep dreaming is random, uncontrolled thoughts and images that come to a person. Wake dreaming is (or can be) controlled thoughts and ideas had while eyes or open looking or staring at images. Wake dreaming can be what people with "vision" do when they are planning their next moves, their future. Some of us can see to the next hour, others the next day, and others to the next 10 years or the next 7 generations.

Some of us went to bed, fell asleep peacefully, with the hope of waking up from our sleep to a new day.

Others of us were knocked in the head, fell unconscious, to wake up to traumas of the unknown, not an unknown at the hands of the universe and its mysteries, but the unknown of humankind, the kind of humans that salivate to commit acts of savagery on the lives of those different from them.