They told Courtney Carson he was nothing.
Some said he was worse than that. Throughout Decatur, Ill., and beyond, people tossed around the words “gangster” and “loser” as though they were chips in a casino.
The insults were not completely accurate or completely off the mark. Carson admits he was a troubled kid back in 1999, someone who hung out with a bad crowd and was willing to help finish trouble even if he hadn’t started it.
That, he said, is what happened Sept. 17 of that year, when he was part of a fight that erupted in the stands during a Decatur high school football game.
The incident, captured on videotape, received national attention. Carson and five other students–all African-American–were expelled for two years under a zero-tolerance policy against violence, and reactions to that expulsion included a series of protests by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Many people regarded all the students as thugs, and while Carson didn’t share that view, he regarded his life and his future at that point as “a car wreck.”
Tuesday in a gym at Aurora University, that life and that future looked a whole lot better. Carson, 23, is a senior at Aurora and not only the basketball team’s starting point guard but also a captain and someone respected in the community.
People still remember the fight, and basketball has helped keep the memory from dimming, but Carson doesn’t see that as all bad.
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“Basketball is my attention-getter, to tell everyone who doubted me or said that I was born to lose that I’m still here,” he said quietly. “I have not yet arrived, but I am still a work in progress.”
Life never figured to be easy for Carson. He had a father who all but ignored him, an abusive stepfather and a mother who did her best but struggled to provide for five kids.
Those factors kept Carson on the edge of trouble and finally caused his uncle, Tony Carson, to become his legal guardian about a decade ago.
“I just saw potential in him,” said Tony Carson, whose son Tony Jr. also plays for Aurora. “He was always a good kid, just on that borderline of being good and needing some direction.”
Courtney didn’t play basketball as a sophomore at Decatur Eisenhower because he didn’t get along with the coach, but he was preparing to play the following year at MacArthur when taunting turned into fighting during a football game at Eisenhower.
The brawl lasted only about 20 seconds, but before Carson knew it he was banished from school and faced felony mob-action charges.
Carson eventually spent more than a month in jail and pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor battery. He remembers how hard it was to see his daughter Courtnee, now 7, through a county jail window, and how bad it felt when friends and teachers gave up on him.
“Everyone in the world was saying, `These kids are nothing. They were born to lose. They weren’t going to make it anyway,'” he said. “One teacher told me I would work at McDonald’s, and my favorite teacher said if the school board let us back in school, he’d resign.
“I thought, `Whoa, am I really this bad?'”
Carson believed the answer was no and vowed to prove it. He began to study the Bible and became more aware of his African-American roots.
“I got more in touch with God and my culture,” he said.
Thanks in part to intercession by former Gov. George Ryan, the expulsions were reduced to one year. Carson got his GED and took a shot at playing junior-college basketball that didn’t work out.
He learned about Aurora through his cousin and contacted basketball coach James Lancaster. Lancaster checked out Carson through contacts in central Illinois, met with him and decided to take a chance.
“He just needed to catch a break and someone to believe in him,” Lancaster said.
Carson arrived at Aurora in 2003 as a sophomore and has been a solid performer on the court and in the classroom.
He has maintained a relationship with Jackson, whose Rainbow/PUSH Coalition gave him a scholarship to attend Aurora. Through Jackson, Carson has spoken at Rainbow/PUSH events and has met a string of prominent people, including former President Bill Clinton.
“It’s a wonderful feeling that people believe in me,” Carson said.
It’s clear he wants to return the favor. He is active in an Aurora program in which athletes read to local children and is starting a community-action organization to help the disadvantaged in Decatur.
Carson also plans to become a teacher after graduating next December.
“I feel God sent me here to help these kids who have to fight the pressures of poverty,” he said. “I’d like to give back and show people that Courtney Carson is not such a bad guy.”
Jackson believes Carson has the maturity and determination to do it.
“He’s going to be a great leader one day,” Jackson said. “He has that burning desire to make a contribution.
“I call it the X-factor. You can tell when he speaks he has the capability to grab people’s attention far beyond his ballplaying ability.”
Carson regrets the 1999 fight and regrets that some people stilljudge him by it, but if you offered him a do-over he would turn it down.
He has, after all, become a poster child for the flaws of one-size-fits-all zero-tolerance policies as well as a role model for poor African-American kids.
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“I feel everything happens for a reason, so I don’t know I’d particularly say I would take that away from my life,” he said. “I wish the situation had been handled in a different way, but I think it’s God’s will I experienced that.
“God just had a different plan for me.”
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