First in a series
Dateline Carson – Drexell Johnson-Muhammad is sufficiently vocal to be a one-man orchestra, playing every instrument, originating every sound.
Charming in the style of a vociferous hurricane, he is more politically incorrect than any earthling you have encountered.
For those reasons he deserves an audience because he comes to bat with only a single strike left.
Soon you may find yourself hunching forward to avoid missing a syllable.
He is dynamic. He is fiery, and he exudes charisma.
Think, perhaps, Muhammad Ali.
You will choose different words if you disagree with his firestorm of cement-strong opinions.
He can do an hour on the betrayal of the black working community by perceived toadying black elected officials and black non-elected leaders such as churchmen without employing a comma or ever repeating himself.
But his compelling story – “you will see more black construction workers in Mississippi, where I was born, than you do in California” – keeps bouncing off walls.
Why?
This does not come accompanied by a guarantee, but vocally, his lexicon and confrontational style do not conform to the media’s notion of how a black leader should talk and should comport himself.
Co-Star or Is He?
Just last Tuesday morning, he stood shoulder to shoulder – well, sort of – with Damien Goodmon of the Crenshaw Subway Coalition.
They met at the intersection of Crenshaw and Exposition boulevards, in the shadow of the heavily covered groundbreaking of the Crenshaw light rail line.
The Goodmon-Johnson-Muhammad media conference was well publicized and impressively covered. The lack of hired black construction workers on the Crenshaw-to-LAX light rail line was at the top of their agenda.
At least eight television and radio outlets aimed their cameras/microphones at the pair.
For television effect, Mr. Johnson-Muhammad and a team of his colleagues – all wearing hard hats – lined up across, holding a wide, color-coordinated banner identifying their group.
This Will Sting
The young, suave, slender, sophisticated Mr. Goodmon, smooth as homemade lemon meringue pie, took the lead, and journalists’ eyes never left him. When he handed the microphone to the burly, sometimes bombastic Mr. Johnson-Muhammad, he ignited rhetorical rockets that lit up the 9:30-in-the-morning Crenshaw sky.
“I thought I made some pretty bell-ringing statements,” the very self-aware labor leader said later.
But when radio news shows and television newscasts were rewound and played back, Mr. Goodmon was the star, the second banana, everything.
Like fairy dust, Mr. Johnson-Muhammad was nowhere to be seen. Or heard.
Building a Mission
Twenty years ago, ambitious, imaginative and as unavoidable as the weather, Mr. Johnson-Muhammad, a young family man of 36, launched a lofty mission for his people.
Committed to finding work wherever it existed for construction workers of his long-deprived culture, he founded the Young Black Contractors Assn., Inc., as a pathway to a rewarding career for historic societal longshots.
However, their employment status is even worse today than it was in 1994, Mr. Johnson-Muhammad said this afternoon as he positioned his imposing 6-1½, 275-pound structure on couch in the serene lobby of the DoubleTree Hotel.
The not only traditional but contemporary denial of black construction workers is one of the towering unreported tragedies of 21st century America.
(To be continued)
