When I first wrote my open letter to Don Moose Lewis, the Augusta community, and the world at large, I began to have any eerie feeling that I was part of a con game. The whole scheme just seemed so convenient. A promoter from Atlanta comes out of nowhere and proposes an all-white basketball league on Martin Luther King Day. A newspaper from Augusta known for its divisiveness in the community decides to run with this story. Both parties benefited by receiving national attention. Both parties are quoted in newspapers all over the world. I personally reached out to Don Moose Lewis to find out if this was some publicity stunt or if he was really serious about bringing such a league to Augusta. He sent me a Facebook message saying that as soon as all the hoopla died down he would contact me. Well, he never did. After many attempts to contact Mr. Lewis, I finally gave up. I began to scour the Internet in hopes of finding an interview that Mr. Lewis gave that confirmed my fears. Well, I finally found that interview. The following is a direct quote from an interview that Mr. Lewis gave to Creative Loafing, a website out of Atlanta:
(Courtesy of Creative Loafing)
Is the league gonna happen, or is it just a publicity stunt? Well, yes and yes. It’s absolutely going to happen, he insists. He says the response has
been overwhelmingly positive and he thinks he can get 2,000 to 3,000 spectators at games. But he also copped to the gimmickiness of the
league’s whites-only requirement. He wouldn’t be getting any attention from the media, he says, if his announcement about a new league didn’t say
the league was whites-only. “I had a conventional league for a year-and-a-half. I lost a ton of money,” he says. “The press release is basically to
garner press. It worked. I’ve slashed my advertising budget because I don’t need it anymore,” he says, noting a crew from “The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart” (which he calls “The Jon Daily Show”) will be interviewing him this week. In other words, Lewis believes he’s using the media’s shock, horror
and condescension to his advantage.
So there you have it, straight from the Moose's mouth! Someone needs to ask the Augusta Chronicle some serious questions. The first being, why in the world did you give this guy a major spotlight? Before I approached Ben Hasan to print my open letter about the all-white basketball league, I approached the Augusta Chronicle. I let everybody who was somebody at the Augusta Chronicle know about this open letter. I even had a prominent member of the community who has her own radio talk show to petition the Augusta Chronicle for me. Basically, I received the cold shoulder from the Augusta Chronicle. (Big surprise there!) Now it all makes sense. I can see why the Augusta Chronicle wanted the story to go away very quickly. If it lingered around too long, people would begin to wonder if the Augusta Chronicle was in collusion with Mr. Lewis.
Now is the time to admit my part in this whole fiasco. I should have just read this story, made a few comments, and kept on moving on. I feel bad about wasting my time and more importantly, other people's time on a publicity stunt. Every word in my open letter was sincere. I really do believe that an all-white basketball league would set the city of Augusta back a few decades. But at the same time, I feel foolish to even be associated with such a publicity stunt. So this essay is just a simple way for me to say, I've been had! The joke's on me and anyone else who got fired up over this issue. Looks like we got race hustled!!! Oh well, I guess you live and learn.
Corey Washington
Author of Plain Talk Volume 1
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