My name is James C. Hawkins.
I am 83 years old.
I was born in a small town in Florida called Apalachicola, Florida.
In all black southern community, the neighborhood in all white southern community, I moved from
there to a place called Providence, Rhode Island.
There were about 450 students and I was the only non-white minority in the whole school.
For the first three months, I had almost a fight every night after school.
Who's Jimmy gonna have to fight today?
My father always said, pick out the leader, pick out the one with the most mouth.
You take him out, the others will respect you and they won't bother you.
If he takes you out, then they'll admire the courage you had to go against someone they
couldn't handle.
And Jimmy did extremely well.
There was a scholarship given to the top boy and a scholarship given to the top girl.
I got the boy scholarship.
A lot of families, parents, resented that.
In fact, everything they told me I couldn't do, that became my goal to do.
At MIT, and being across the river from Boston University, as a fellow I met, I used to see
quite a bit going to school at Martin Luther King, taking his religious training.
If you were a civil rights crusader, you had to be qualified to do that.
And I've been to this lunch counter in Greensboro, I've been there many times.
Can I sit there and have someone pour salt on my head, pour milk in my food?
I could not do that.
I was not man enough.
I agree that nonviolence is the way.
It takes more skill to not hit someone, but yet be at the point of impact and know what
it was.
That's what I like about karate.
We moved to Massachusetts, where I was to have my first home, and my wife and I went
through hell.
Nighttime calls, all kinds of things you couldn't even imagine.
Explorative get out of town.
Inward get out of town.
Our next door neighbor had formed a committee for the provision of undesirables to the community
It took 30 days of pure hell.
One night I was in the working, sawed us in my hair, and a doorbell rang, a man came
to the door and he said, I am the one who beat a lot of the calls to you, who organized
the committees to stop you from coming into this area, and I realized I had no reason
to.
I didn't know you.
And I stood there with a drill in my hand, tears in my eyes, and my wife started to cry
also.
I had to say if this man was man enough to come face me with that kind of admission,
then I could do no more than accept it and even respect him.
And we became good, good friends, where people fear the unknown and what they don't know
and don't understand.
I went to a karate match and my future teacher was in it and I just liked the way he conducted
himself.
He was a gentleman, he was a gentleman fighter.
And he cared about the ones he'd beaten.
Then I decided at age 35 that I was going to go into it for real.
I did this up until February of 2013, when I came down with the right anterior sarcoma
on my right leg, which is another form of cancer.
And as my daughter says, you had three bouts for the cancer and you won all three.
I guess I did, I guess I did.
The champion is the one who gives an honest and a complete effort and everything he attempts.
Don't tell me why you can't do it.
Tell me what you need to be able to do it, because all winners are not champions, but
you know in your heart that you did your best and you accepted responsibility for it and
went for it.
To me, that makes you a champion.
