By Adam Harris, Marketplace, August 10, 2021
The subtle crunch of snow under your feet is rare in Alabama, but plush white powder blanketed the ground when I arrived on the campus of Alabama A&M University in Normal, Alabama, for my first semester in January 2010. The packed flakes clung to the buildings like fitted sheets. It made the Hill, as students called the campus, indescribably beautiful. The university is tucked away in the rolling Tennessee Valley of North Alabama. It was the third college founded in the state to educate Black students after the Civil War, and the first with agricultural education in mind. But to me, A&M was simply a place that felt like home.
I was probably always going to end up attending college at A&M. Some of my earliest memories are of the drum majors ā high-stepping in maroon capes, sporting felt hats ā leading the band with intricately designed maces as if they were going to battle. My mom had gone to A&M in the eighties; my uncle had as well. In fact, he was a drum major himself. Still, it took me six months after high school to realize it was the place for me.
My parents would probably say it was my hard head that landed me instead at Lon Morris junior college in Jacksonville, a quiet East Texas town with a Walmart, a Taco Bell, and not much else. The real reason was basketball. I had been recruited by a handful of Division I programs: Stanford, Cornell, Murray State, Brown, and others, but I suffered an injury my senior year of high school. Lon Morris was my way to show big-time scouts that I still had it. Those coaches never called again, but early in my freshman year, the ones from Alabama A&M did. I jumped at the opportunity. It helped that my sister was already there as a sophomore on the volleyball team. A&M was no longer a home by proxy, where my family was educated; it was my home.
Comments (0)