Unprecedented Challenges: One Man's Fight for Economic Justice

By John Pointer

After retiring from professional football ('81-'87), John positioned himself to become a thriving entrepreneur, especially in the petroleum business. In less than three years, he rose to become a Congressionally Acclaimed Top Rated Minority Businessman. Nonetheless, he began noticing indifferent actions from the US Small Business Administration'

• Language: English
• Publisher: sole proprieter
• Release date: Jun 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781088036655

Book preview

UNPRECEDENTED

CHALLENGES!

One Man’s Fight for Economic Justice

John L. Pointer

Copyright @ 2022 by

John L. Pointer

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the author.

ISBN: 978-1-0880-3665-5

Printed in the United States of America

"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?

Expediency asks the question, is it politic?

Vanity asks the question, is it popular?

But conscience asks the question, is it right?

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

excerpt from1968 sermon

Preface

This is my life’s story of simply trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately, today, being a person:

Who doesn’t turn a blind eye to discrimination, criminal fraud, and abuse.

Wants to be a change agent—helping individuals and agencies live up to their own standards and missions because it is the law.

is considered abnormal in today's society along with remaining to be innocent until you get caught by many in private business and government agencies. As a person of color, I have faced decades of blatant racism, death threats, and loss of careers along with severe financial hardships.

My story, however, is also rich in faith, family, and friends, all essential ingredients for surviving the harsh storms of life. I have learned about hard work and discipline from:

Family stories of my maternal grandfather’s mule and horse-trading business and he only had a second-grade education, he stood 6’10. My Uncle Sherman was 6’9.

Dad was once a star tight end in football in high school and he was invited to attend college at Tennessee State A&I to play college football. He only played briefly.

My father became the first African American store manager in the entire state of Tennessee for the national chain of grocery stores, Atlantic & Pacific (A&P), which was thriving in the 60s-70s well before there was Walmart. 

My mother, who was so laser-focused on teaching students post-Jim Crow era that for a few summers she would leave her family and relocate to HBCU college dorms in order for her to receive her Masters in Education.

My marriage with my partner for life, who had to help adjust our family's existence during severe government or criminal retaliatory acts towards the Pointer family. 

Being a student-athlete, and

Being a professional football player

All these experiences helped me become an entrepreneur—the ultimate American dream.

Table of Contents

Part I    Football & Pointer Oil

1 Family, Faith, and Football

2. Eye-Opening Experiences at Vanderbilt

3. The Start of a Professional Career

4. CLF’s Rich Tradition  (Training Camp)

5. Bend but Don’t Break: My Motto, My Creed

6. The Lifestyle of a Pro Player

7. Grey Cup Ceremonies and Memories

8. Grey Cup, New Team

9. Young Family Life

10. Start-Up Days of Pointer Oil Company

11. NFL Strike Season

12. Small Business Administration and Pointer Oil

13. White-Collar Crime

14. The Grand Jury, National Exposure, and Hardship

15. Offensive Moves (On the Attack)

16.  The Temptation to Distract

17. The American Justice System

18. The Verdict

Part II    Hard Times and Awards

19. The English Teacher

20. Public Servant

21. Testifying and Accolades

Part III    Advocate

22. Undefeated

Part I

Football & Pointer Oil

By labor comes wealth.

—African Proverb

1

Family, Faith, and Football

My life started out in the ordinary way lives do, especially down South. I was born in Columbia, Tennessee, which is a small city sixty miles south of Nashville. I am the second son of Cleo and John Pointer. My big brother, Reggie, is just 6 years older than me. Oh, it was fun for a kid in our neighborhood. Running, climbing, games we made up, and pick-up baseball and football. I always hated to go shopping for my clothes with Mom because I was listed by national retail clothing stores such as Sears, Castner-Knott, and JC Penney as being a husky size kid. Also, I hated when I would find myself finishing mostly being picked last in our street races nor did I play wide receiver much during our neighborhood sandlot football games. I was the center while the older guys on the other team in the neighborhood would rough me up.

My mom was an English, Science, and Reading teacher at Carver-Smith High School, a historically black high school during Segregation (Jim Crow Era) down South. And after the Federal Integration ruling was signed into law in 1969, she had earned her bachelor’s degree from Tennessee State University and her master’s degree from Knoxville College, both Historically Black Colleges in Tennessee. She was unable to just attend White colleges which were located within a sixty-mile radius, she had to go for the summer and live in the Black university’s dorms.

Dad had also attended Tennessee State University as a star tight end on the football team. He had to quit the team and leave the university in Nashville to return home when his mother died because he had to provide for his maternal grandparents and other siblings. When I was growing up, he worked for Atlantic and Pacific (A&P) food stores, or as we in the South say, the A&P. For decades, Dad was used by the corporate leadership to help train young White males in becoming store managers in the surrounding region of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama, but he was never considered to be a manager until the mid-seventies when he finally became the first African-American manager in the state of Tennessee.

Life was pretty good and pretty busy with school, church, Little League Baseball, and Pee-Wee basketball along with family and friends. Sometimes, during suppertime, we held discussions, and after checking in with Reggie and me to see how school went, we, as a family would discuss the Civil Rights Movement. I mean we identified with the struggle. We, as a family in our Black community, knew we had some advantages such as Mom having a college education and Dad having a good job; but promotions, respect in the wider community (read, white community), voting, participating in the political life of the town were challenges.

I still recall seeing the whites-only and colored-only water fountains at the downtown courthouse in the basement. I also recall the unwritten rule that Whites sat down on the main floor while watching a movie at the theater while Blacks had to sit up in the balcony. Well, it did not bother me and my friends because we were able to throw popcorn and ice downstairs! 

Mom and Dad respected Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his nonviolent approach to challenging the status quo in our small Southern town. They also bought his albums with all of his speeches. In other Tennessee counties, African-American tenet farmers were being thrown off the land for trying to vote. In Nashville, college students were staging sit-ins at Woolworth’s and being arrested. Mom and Dad were so proud when the Voting Rights bill became law in 1964. They worked as volunteers at the polls on election days for several decades.

I was just 10 years old in 1968 when Dr. King was assassinated. I remember that day clearly. We had been so excited that he had come to Tennessee to march with the garbage workers. I can still see the African-American men standing tall in their work clothes holding signs saying, I Am A Man! For young people today, that must seem like ancient history. But for me, it was my life.

My parents and our church taught Reggie and me that all people are created in God’s image. However, I did not understand why all the pictures in the Bible and on the walls of churches portrayed Jesus, God, and people during biblical times as White with a light tan. I also did not understand why it was considered a sin to play musical instruments in Churches of Christ. Because, as soon as we would leave my mother’s church, I’d turn on the radio, and Nashville’s FM radio station (WVOL, FM) would play James Brown’s hit – Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud! For over seventy-five years of his life, my father attended a neighborhood African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church. At times, when I would go to my father’s church, there would be musical instruments such as piano and tambourine, as well as neighborhood mothers receiving the