Courtside: A Memoir of Life, Learning, Law & Purpose

By Derick Loury and Jay Wright

Courtside, by Derick Loury is an autobiography detailing the growth, development, and challenges of a man with a rich range of experiences throughout his life. Basketball becomes a grounding and centering point for him, inspiring him on and off the court. He becomes a talented player throughout high school and college, though ultimately follows a different path once reaching adulthood and he cycles through a few jobs before joining law enforcement and, eventually, becoming a prison warden.

He has many relationships along the way, friends and family that impact his life. The book is divided into three main sections–aptly titled with basketball terms–that chronicle grade school, college, and life after college. Though high school had set him up for a bright future in basketball, even earning him a scholarship to college, various obstacles kept him from achieving any true momentum with the sport. After many set-backs and life challenges, he finds a new passion and career in Law Enforcement which would eventually lead to his current career as a prison warden. Basketball remained a passion as he sought to organize leagues to give back to his community or to officiate for various schools.

This book succeeds in an interesting combination of styles, while not quite being strictly any of them. It has a stream-of-consciousness feel while maintaining a linear drive forward through the author's life. At times it reads very factual and textbook like, which feels authentic to the author's style and experiences. He blends lists and facts with a distinct narrative voice to properly capture his unique perspective on life and its many challenges.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667842981

Book preview

PREFACE

IN THE HOLY BIBLE, GOD so eloquently described the environment from which he created and all things that manifested through his word. Allow me an opportunity to describe the environment from which my understanding developed of the transformation of a people who inherited the kingdom of God.

In 1956, my family relocated from Summerton, South Carolina to live in Elmwood, Philadelphia. Prior to my birth the family settled and lived with my Uncle and Aunt Samuel McBride. They moved in with one another until enough money and resources could be saved to move into their own house. After several years, they relocated to Darby Township when I was two years old. We moved in a new housing development called Edge Brook Manor. This development was promulgated by the Housing Authority Commission.

As time permitted as a youngster, I was always interested in the things that surrounded me whether it was people, places or things; I also was attracted to the patterns of behaviors within our community. According to my research and analysis of the demographics, African-American citizens populated the southern end with approximately 4,510 people. My grandfather Preston Nelson and grandmother Emma Nelson were our source for family stability and cohesiveness. Once we received adequate funding in order to qualify for an apartment dwelling, my father and mother moved just a few hundred yards away from the Edge Brook Manor to 1300 Clifton Avenue. Grand-pop worked at the Baldwin Lima Hamilton before leaving for an employment opportunity with United Airlines, and grand-mom worked as a house maid cleaning mansions for the wealthy homeowners in the white community.

The workforce were mostly median lower-class and sparse middle-income professionals who worked in the City of Philadelphia, while others worked at the airport, US Post Office, Scott’s Paper Company, International Paper Company, Baldwin Lima Hamilton, Westinghouse, Philadelphia Transportation Company, General Electric, Sun Ship yard, and Philadelphia Navy yard, just to name a few. The residents were proud homeowners and rental tenants. According to a long-time resident of the township, Claude Edney, Jr., there were more than enough churches within the community that represented several denominations within the two wards. So, within the spectrum of the community, there were live vibrations surrounding these institutions coupled with speakeasies escorting the lawless of prohibition during Sunday. These were blue-collar workers who were avid parents who embraced the community concept and defended our rights and privileges in an underserved community.

The township had been surrounded by environmental threats. These conditions serve to create a substandard and unsanitary environment; an environment prone to impose substantial constraints on resident’s physical, intellectual and emotional development. The South Section of Darby Township presently has more problems than the North. Among these are a high number of substandard dwelling units, large poorly maintained parcels, and an entire area (Bonsall Tract) that lacks basic utilities, roads, sidewalks, recreational facilities and municipal services such as refuse removal according to the report issued by the County feasibility study. The Gulf Oil Tank Farm, a large cemetery, the closed Clear View Landfill and a sewage treatment plant are nearby. Most of this area is aesthetically deficient. There were recycling paper companies, metal collection depots and a brick yard plant along with a county incinerator situated across from the sewage treatment plant, on the southeast corner of Tribbitt Avenue and Calcon Hook Road. These hazardous sites were less than 400 feet away from the residential tract and a recreational area for children.

A large, unsightly auto graveyard is located on a triangular parcel at the southwest corner of the intersection of Calcon Hook Road and Hook Road. Darby Creek watershed, which runs throughout the center of the town and gave life to our pristine parks, was being threatened by pollutants such as municipal waste, demolition and hospital waste. With that, a two-lane thoroughfare allowed Cargo trucks, residential transits, visiting tourists and other citizens to take a shortcut through the area on a road called Hook Road. To the west of Calcon Hook Road there are two problem areas, Lincoln Park and the previously mentioned Bonsall Tract. A portion of the Calcon Hook Industrial Park and a large vacant parcel (zoned light industrial) are located between Calcon Hook Road and Lincoln Park.

During the year 1966, the war in Vietnam continued its escalation, NASAs Project Gemini was completed after ten manned launches, and the USSR successfully landed a vehicle on the moon. The first automated teller machine (ATM) was introduced, along with miniaturized televisions, while race riots and anti-war protests swept the United States.

On the northern of side of the heavily traveled two-lane highway in Darby Township was The Lincoln Park. Lincoln Park was another notable housing development because it honored our colored veterans returning from World War II and accommodated active and inactive soldiers’ families. These families were educated by the Catholic Diocese school system, which required the community students to walk through the white community while attending schools, whereas students of the other sectors of the town attended the Darby Township public school system and were transported by one bus. The Lincoln School held first through third grade. There was one other housing development known as Green Hill Park housing development in the township. With this housing development there were more people who lived in the southern end of Darby Township than the northern area. Through the lens of community correspondents, Darby Township Elementary School initially was to teach students who scored high within the parameters set forth by the school board.

As result of the progressive housing plan mandated by the Fair Housing Act, the population exploded in the black community, which caused the School Board to deviate their scheme which later changed. The political pushback felt as intrusive towards the northern community stakeholders who dominated the school board. I discovered a housing plan explosion similar in contexts to our yesteryear school desegregation plan eventually intimidated the stakeholders to overreach in a power grab to remain in control regardless of the socioeconomic circumstances or politics. In New Jersey’s small town of Freehold Township and Freehold Borough, there is a situation that raised my overall suspicion of an interesting coordinating plan that shadows a few mitigating things in Darby Township Southern section versus Darby Township Northern section by analogy: A 2017 UCLA study found New Jersey schools had a severe segregation of black and Hispanic students and was headed for a segregated future with severe racial stratification and division. It stated that the schools are not serving their historical function of bringing newcomers and excluded groups into the mainstream of the society.

Much of the school segregation is not due to specific efforts to keep schools racially divided as was done in the south decades ago. Rather, it dates back to the first housing expansion of New Jersey, particularly the suburbs, in the 1950s and 1960s. New Jersey’s constitution, enacted in 1947, seven years before the Brown decision, explicitly forbid segregation in the public schools. Yet that provision and the state’s anti-discrimination laws failed to halt the steady, decades-long creep of de facto segregation. Experts point to a number of factors, including the rapid growth of suburbs after World War II, which drew generations of white families from the cities. Exclusionary zoning practices and racist redlining schemes forced many minority families to remain in the cities. Compounding to divide is called the medieval residency law for public schools, which mandates in most cases that students attend schools that are closest to their homes. The result: children of color from mostly low-income households remain concentrated in the aging cities and attend schools with very few white classmates. The reverse is true in the suburbs, where large concentrations of middle class and affluent white students attend schools with a small number of minorities. The stakeholders created a system under which housing was segregated and everything we have done since is laced with a mindset for segregation or what makes America great as opposed to diversity and inclusion.

Now back to my neighborhood. The Darby Township Elementary (DTE) located on the northern end of Darby Township, located on School Lane and Rively Avenue in the north, is the larger of the elementary schools with 21 classrooms and the largest total enrollment. The school plan slightly changed, because the pundits called the stakeholders out on their politicking tactics. It serves grades one through four and has 28 teachers for 250 male and 200 female students. The size of the site, incorporating a playground, is four acres. There was at one time one bus operating in the community, until the school board moved to purchase or lease a total of five buses. Throughout our community’s school’s history, the Pundits (SE Delco School Board) always utilized a designed strategy against any educational movement that our community in the southern end of Darby Township tried to implement. The school board was creative in developing social barriers and releasing misinformation. If the community pushed back, then the rules would be altered to favor the stakeholders.

Just before my entrance in the elementary school, there were many Courtside competitive issues that grabbed the attention of the community. These included a legal battle against the school district fighting a desegregation plan and fierce competitive outdoor basketball league games held in the Studevan school yard. The basketball games were epic, showcasing players such as my second cousin, Joseph Big Joe Williams, Joe Wright, Leroy Eldridge, Applegate Waller, Mitchell Carter and Wally Taylor, who brought the necessary esteem to the neighborhood. These players along with next-level outdoor basketball games was extremely popular and well attended by the neighborhood kids and outside visitors from Darby, Chester and Ridley following their teams’ competition throughout the County.

During the same timeframe, of course, the regular High School basketball season the followed players headed by Leroy Eldridge, Tony Williams’ Big Joe, Oliver Smith, Jimmy Angelos and Wendell Houston, who achieved the first ever in PIAA Class C state championship team that put Darby Township basketball on the map forever while winning 28 wins games with one loss.

The other courtside issue impacting our town was the pending court battle against the school board. The court case argues the following: A group of black elementary school students and their parents residing in the southern portion of Darby Township appeals a decision of the district court following a nonjury trial. The court rejected our claim that the Southeast Delco School District desegregation plan places an unconstitutionally and undue burden on the black students. They objected that the closing of the only elementary school (Studevan) in a predominately black neighborhood disproportionately affects black students and, therefore, demonstrates that racial animus motivated the school board’s decision to close the school. The district court held the school district had been de jure segregated prior to adoption of the disputed plan. It placed the burden on the school board to prove that its decision to close the school was not racially motivated. The court held the school board’s evidence of age, physical deterioration and unsafe conditions in and surrounding the school building, as well as the closing of a school in a predominantly white neighborhood, and the plan’s provisions for reassigning both white and black students, satisfied the board’s burden. The court affirmed.

Fast forward 12 years later, upon my exit from high school, I received the results of the court case while attending college under a Division One basketball scholarship reading excerpts from the Daily Times newspaper, dealing with the Southeast Delco School Board. The court case argues a group of black elementary students and their parents residing in the southern portion of Darby Township appeals from a decision of the District Court following a non-jury trial. The court rejected our claim that the southeast Delco school district desegregation plan places an unconstitutionally and undue burden on the black students. So, what was at stake throughout the Township of Darby (a small town known for extraordinary efforts for athletics and unpredictable educational opportunities), a marquee High School in existence for a mere 18 years, was that it would eventually be extinct like the dinosaur, gone forever, all because of a poorly designed housing development plan geared to protect the integrity of the white stakeholders’ voting power disguised through the lens of the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling in 1954. The Southeast Delco School District is located in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It is comprised of the boroughs of Collingdale, Folcroft, Sharon Hill and Darby Township. Darby Township includes two noncontiguous divisions. The northern portion of Darby Township is located in the northwest corner of the district; the southern portion is located in the southeast corner. The boroughs of Collingdale and Sharon Hill separate the two portions of Darby Township. Southern Township is predominantly black. The three boroughs and all of Northern Township, with the exception of the Okeola area, are almost exclusively white.

Before 1972, the boroughs and Darby Township maintained separate school systems. In 1968, a Pennsylvania Common Pleas court order mandated desegregation of the Darby Township school system. Under the order, all students in grades one to four attended Darby Township Elementary School in northern Darby; students in grades five and six attended the Studevan School in southern Darby; high school students attended Darby Township High School in northern Darby. A merger of the Collingdale, Folcroft, Sharon Hill and Darby school systems in 1972 established the Southeast Delco School District. White students in the district continued to attend schools in their respective boroughs, black students continued