The Field That Wasn't Leveled

By Jibreel A. Rashad

The Field That Wasn't Leveled is the true story of a young boy growing up in a lowermiddle-class neighborhood in Dallas, Texas. Against all odds, he manages to survive the tough streets of Oak Cliff while immersing himself into the world of sports, becoming a high school and college football star. For years, he was told by his coaches that the gridiron was an equal playing field. But no one ever told him about the field that wasn't.

After a brief tryout with the NFL New York Giants, he would return to Dallas, Texas, only to find himself being a target in an FBI-masterminded investigation. With his faith intact, he began walking upon "The Field That Wasn't Leveled."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662422621

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Call

March 7, 2006, is a date I will not forget. While sitting at home in Houston, Texas, I received a call around 8:30 a.m. A sudden feeling of intuition told me that it was not going to be good.

The name on the incoming screen of my phone read Pete Thompson. He was my business attorney hired about six months earlier. Pete and I would meet once or twice each month to discuss real estate deals and the latest business topics. Oftentimes, these meetings would go beyond business conversations, turning into social issues and other meaningful discussions.

I enjoyed our exchange of rational thinking. It allowed us to develop a good rapport; however it was uncustomary for Pete to call before 10:00 a.m. Before his hiring, I explained to Pete about an ongoing probe into my company, Rashad Investments, that was being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, one that would later include the city hall in Dallas, Texas.

Pete’s reaction to this was demonstrated by a simple smile. And then he said, "Welcome to the world of the fibis. This was his way of calling the FBI a group of liars—individuals who sometimes manufacture cases just to stay relevant. Grudgingly, I decided to answer the phone. And that’s when Pete spoke words that would change my life forever. He said, Jibreel, the FBI has a warrant for your arrest." At that very moment, my heart began beating like a drummer in a band. Mental anguish started creeping in as I searched for answers while trying to understand how this could have happened and where I went wrong.

This was all too surreal, so I decided to retrace my steps. During the fall of 2001, I started acquiring real estate properties in hopes of becoming self-employed full-time. After reading many real estate books and taking courses, I began applying the business of flipping properties. Of course, that is when a property is purchased at a low value and then immediately sold for a higher price while the investor profits from the equity of the sale.

This type of investing is considered by many as one of the oldest opportunities around. Before acquiring real estate, I had been working as an account executive for Ameriquest Mortgage while operating a sports ticket agency part-time. My aspiration was to be a successful businessman, and I saw real estate as one of the avenues in getting there.

The first investment property I ever bought yielded a return of $23,000. Soon after, I knew financial freedom was obtainable and that the pursuit of happiness was not only for the chosen few.

There have been times when I questioned the success of other individuals, wondering how a certain class of people could attend an opening-day baseball game during the middle of the week or enjoy riding Jet Skis while maneuvering their boat across area lakes.

I was missing out on this precious knowledge that causes economic separation. I questioned myself. Was it entirely me? Or was I truly a victim of a so-called underprivileged group of people? These were burning questions that fueled me, and although I would later break this conundrum, never did I imagine that it would come with such an expensive price.

Chapter 2

The Early Years

I was born December 15, 1966, in Dallas, Texas, and raised mostly in the southern section of Oak Cliff. My mother was a young, single African American woman, who had given birth to me at the age of nineteen. She would often say I was her birthday gift because she had been born on December 14.

I was the second of her four children, my oldest sister, Shelundia, being the first. My mother and biological father, John P. Body, never married, partly due to him being drafted into the United States military to help fight in the Vietnam War. For the first two years, he only saw pictures of me.

As a single mother with one daughter and pregnant with me, life was tough, so she decided to rekindle a previous relationship with my sister’s father, a man by the name of Vernon Cooks, a name that would be given to me at birth. Years later, I learned that this had infuriated my father. This decision had been made while he was at war. Two years later, my brother, Marcus, was born.

Like many African American families growing up in Dallas during the sixties and seventies, we struggled while living in a two-bedroom apartment in the West Dallas housing projects. Our community was the poor striving rich made up of people who wanted a better life for themselves.

After four years of marriage, my mother and Vernon divorced, and we temporarily moved in with my grandmother into a three-bedroom house located in a middle-class neighborhood of Oak Cliff in an area known as Singing Hills. Besides my grandmother, there were three aunts—Ollie, Renee, and Beverly—who lived in the house.

Eight people residing in a three-bedroom house did not make for great comfort; however, for me, those were some of the best times of my life. There were days when the small house felt like a palace due to the love and security I felt.

The tough streets of Angelina and Fishtrap in West Dallas seemed like a distant past. My grandmother, Ms. Ollie Marie Jones, had been a transplant to Texas, arriving from racially segregated Birmingham, Alabama, during the early fifties.

She would later meet a country boy from Longview, Texas, named Robert T. Williams, my grandfather. He became one of the first African American landowners in the small city of Rowlett, Texas, in 1954, a town located about thirty minutes outside of Downtown Dallas.

My grandparents instilled in their children the meaning of hustling for ownership. My mother watched as my grandfather would slop hogs and milk cows by day while running a local juke joint club by night. Learning his habits and traits was highly effective for my family. It certainly gave us the toughness to survive.

My mother would eventually remarry and would soon give birth to my youngest brother, Chad. His father, Aaron Mitchell, was the first real example I had as a man when it came to having a father figure inside the home. He was a good provider and loved animals, especially pacer horses, becoming one of the first African Americans to own a horse track in Dallas, Texas.

Every Sunday during the early mid-seventies, people would travel from all over the D/FW Metroplex eager to race, eat, and enjoy fun-filled entertainment. The horse club, known as the Wagon Wheel Trotters, produced some of the most spectacular horse races around.

And I enjoyed every last one of them, including the work ethic Aaron put in to accomplish his horse-racing dreams. But what I enjoyed the most about him was that Aaron was a fan of the National Football League.

This would have an everlasting effect on me. With him, I was able to witness two of the greatest games ever played in NFL history.

After trailing in the fourth quarter with less than a minute remaining, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach unleased a Hail Mary touchdown pass to wide receiver Drew Pearson in a remarkable come-from-behind win against the Minnesota Vikings.

Then a few weeks later, I would witness my first Super Bowl on television. It was the Pittsburgh Steelers versus the Dallas Cowboys where Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann would give a Most Valuable Player performance. Watching both these great teams gave me hope that someday I, too, could play in the National Football League.

Chapter 3

The Competing Comets

My passion for sports and competing was developed at an early age while learning the principals of sportsmanship, which is the ability to encounter one’s skills during competition while crediting your opponent on their success, whether it’s a win or loss. Doing this with dignity exemplifies great character.

I was taught this valuable lesson by my elementary physical education teacher at Robert L. Thornton. His name was Coach Robert Cox, a median-height and athletically built man with blond hair. Coach Cox’s ethnicity may have been Caucasian, but this lesson he gave to me had a very long-lasting effect. It allowed me to exist within a team concept.

One day, on a Wednesday afternoon during the summer of 1975, I was standing on the corner of a neighborhood street watching as a long white bus began pulling up right in front of me. It was carrying about twenty young boys, all between the ages of eight and thirteen. Upon observing what I perceived to be unusual, minutes later, three of my friends came running out of the house, racing toward the bus after hearing the horn blow.

Kenneth, Greg, and Myron Miles were brothers. Standing with curiosity, I watched as each of them stepped onto the bus. Thereafter, I found myself asking the three, Where are you going?

Kenneth, without hesitation, replied, To football practice. As the driver drove away, I noticed the writing on the side of the bus, which read Salvation Army Cedar Crest Competing Comets.

Kenneth would later explain that the Comets was a youth football team that was always contending for championships in the Pop Warner League.

After hearing this, I became very eager to play. This was my first opportunity to compete on an organized level. Before then, I had only competed in sandlot and streetball.

However, before embarking upon this newfound idea, I had to seek approval from my mother. Her only interest was in me getting a good education. She once pulled me from a sports intramural tournament at school after receiving a B grade and failing to make the A honor roll. This came later in life while I attended W. W. Bushman Elementary where I had been selected in a gifted student program named Young People’s University and needed to maintain straight As. So she did what was necessary.

After much consideration, Mom finally gave in and allowed me to play, but not without stern warnings surrounding my grades. Of course, I agreed. And two days later, I, too, would be stepping on to the long white bus with the Miles brothers.

Throughout my years of playing with the Comets organization, I would team up with some of the most elite young talent that the city of Dallas had to offer—names like Chris Jackson, Keith Shannon, Rickey Dixon, Ray Willis, the Lacey Brothers, and Greg Cunningham, just to name a few.

We were all proud to wear the black and orange colors of the Cedar Crest Comets, and I truly enjoyed the mentoring received from those men who volunteered to coach us—names like Coach Dave, Sheffield, and Jackson, men who cared and demonstrated the patience to educate young men not only about football but also about the game of life.

Joining the Comets organization exposed me to instant character building because in order to succeed, one has to be mentally strengthened.

There was always stiff competition and tackling practices with the Comets. In fact, it was during one of these tackling sessions when I first experienced having the wind knocked right out of me. It was a blind-side hit due to not keeping up without exercise routine by an ex-teammate named Darrell White.

The impact from that tackle taught me a very early lesson about awareness and discipline. There would be many more things I would learn, such as how to properly wear a jockstrap, unlike the time when I had my first weigh-in, a weight system used in Pop Warner football to determine whether or not a child is qualified to play at certain team levels for a game.

Before stepping on the scale, it was quickly noted that my jockstrap was on backward, leaving nothing except my male phallus exposed, sending my teammates and coaches into laughter. They took great joy in my exhibitionist display, and I must say, so did I.

Perhaps the greatest lesson learned during those early years was something often spoken by Coach Dave—eight simple letters: equality—although his idea translated more to the playing field.

Some of the youth teams we faced had an all-White supporting cast, like the Bengals, Waco Elks, and White Rock Rebels. Coach Dave wanted to remove any self-inflicting doubt that we were an inferior team based upon our skin color. He believed that your football talent alone would be the equalizer when it came to the gridiron.

My childhood and high school teammate Kenneth Miles and Me

Chapter 4

Momma Did Knock Me Out

My love for the game of football developed rather quickly. I could not see myself doing anything else. However, this love would bring turmoil between Mother and I due to the Sunday-afternoon games that I enjoyed watching on television. This conflicted with her principal demands of having to attend church, which was sometimes all day.

On one occasion, I purposely hid the only pair of church shoes I had just so I could watch both the Pittsburgh Steelers’ and Dallas Cowboys’ game, hoping it would prevent me from having to attend church. Boy, was I wrong.

After she scolded me, I was ordered to get in the car barefoot. Needless to say, I quickly discovered one of them. I was too afraid to present the second one, feeling that she would have known I lied.

All day while at church service, I sat and walked around with one shoe on and one shoe off. I would rather have faced ridicule and laughter from the other children than meet the fury of a scorned Christian woman, so I decided to limp around while pretending to have suffered an ankle injury playing football.

As I grew older, this continued to be a constant struggle, not due to attending church but because of the long parking-lot fellowshipping that she would oftentimes do, spending at least another thirty to forty-five minutes saying her goodbyes. This, I felt, was costing me valuable minutes from watching the NFL games.

One particular Sunday, I had a meltdown as I stood waiting outside the church parking lot. After seeing her continuous bantering, I shouted, Let’s go, you talk too much. The look in her eyes pierced my very soul. She quickly demanded that I wait inside the car. The drive home would be a replay of the story of Ike and Tina Turner, during the scene of the limousine ride, except in this movie, Ike never throws a punch and Tina wins.

That day, I found out my mother could throw a mean right hook while driving sixty-five miles per hour down the highway. It came as I sat in the back seat listening to her berate me about my attitude. I rudely interrupted and said, Why do I need to go to church? It’s boring anyway. Upon hearing this, she must have known Linda Blair because her head spun around like Linda’s in the move The Exorcist.

While driving with her left hand on the steering wheel and keeping her right foot on the gas pedal, my mother began landing a series of punches across the top of my head as if it was a speed bag. The fusillade of punches would have made Muhammad Ali proud.

Needless to say, after that, she never had much of an issue with her extended fellowshipping. If so, my mother would glance over at me and gradually raise one fist toward her eye to signal that she had no problem defending her title.

Back then, I had no explanation for my outburst; however, today I do. It’s called crazy. Fortunately, as I continued processing