Michael Jordan_ The Life ( PDFDrive.com )_compressed (1)_compressed

found immense fame and fortune in the spotlight, they’ve quickly constructed
such mythologies. They’ve often done this out of self-preservation, to protect
family members from the all-consuming media-driven pop culture.
Deloris Jordan had to shield her family from many situations as her son
became famous in the 1980s. So it’s not surprising that she began the creation of
such a narrative, one that omitted or glossed over many hard facts. She did this
first in interviews and later in her book, Family First, which offered childrearing
advice, by implication, on how families could raise their children to “be
like Mike.” The bestselling book would enable Mrs. Jordan to travel the world,
making public appearances in support of family issues.
The reality of Deloris Jordan is so much more powerful than the made-up
story because it reveals her character and, later in her life, her ability to move her
own family through brutal circumstances. There’s little question that the
obstacles Deloris Jordan faced fired her efforts in raising her family. As a result,
they also provided the very fuel of Air Jordan.
Rocky Point
Appropriately, the families that would become Michael Jordan’s gene pool first
met on the hardwood in a cramped gym filled with cheering students. According
to vague community and family memories, James and his younger brother Gene
Jordan played for Charity High. Deloris’s brothers, Edward and Eugene Peoples,
played for the Rocky Point Training School of Pender County. The two schools
enjoyed a rivalry back in those days, and folks in the community recall that the
Peoples boys were good players.
They also recall the love students and faculty had for Rocky Point. Opened in
1917, it was one of five thousand schools, shops, and teachers’ homes built for
African Americans in communities across the country with money provided by
the Rosenwald Fund, a trust set up by Sears, Roebuck and Company president
Julius Rosenwald. The equipment wasn’t always the best; used furniture and
books, often with pages torn out, were passed down from the county’s white
schools. “We got what they had worn out,” recalled William Henry Jordan, a
relative of the family. But in an age when black education was at best an
afterthought for local school boards, the school’s dedicated teachers prepared
students for every sort of challenge, which made Rocky Point important to the
African American population of Pender County right up until integration in the
late 1960s.