Article on Belle Glade FLA reference to farmworkers

[Guest guest]

Many of you may know that this is the town where I grew up after migrating

from South Texas. Some things don't change. Most probably all Latino

migrant kids drop out and never graduate.

Adolfo Mata

A Town Where Football Is the Glue and the Hope

November 23, 2001

By JERE LONGMAN

BELLE GLADE, Fla., Nov. 22 - The sugar cane harvest is

under way, as trucks line up to transport the sweet stalks,

acrid fires burn off the leafy undergrowth and smokestacks

puff from the sugar mills. In a verdant town where the

welcome signs say, " Her Soil Is Her Fortune, " this is the

money season.

The nation's largest crop of sweet corn also grows in the

rich black muck on the northern edge of the Everglades and

the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee. Equally reliable is

the annual bumper crop of football victories produced by

Glades Central High School. The Raiders have won all 12

games this season, and 47 in a row, advancing to Friday's

quarterfinal round of the playoffs and toward a fourth

consecutive state championship.

Seven former players are now in the National Football

League, including running back Fred of the

ville Jaguars and receiver Reidel of the

Tampa Bay Buccaneers. No other high school has produced as

many current professionals, according to the N.F.L. Eight

of this year's 31 seniors are Division I college prospects,

and numerous Glades Central graduates are participating in

some level of college ball, coaches said.

" It's more of a way of life here, " said the assistant coach

Larry Antonacci, who grew up in the football-consumed coal

region of northeastern Pennsylvania. " Kids eat, drink,

sleep, dream football. "

The sport exists as the primary diversion in a town that

lacks even a movie theater - " There's nothing else to do, "

running back Marrio Fraser said. It provides a potential

opportunity for a college education, a professional career

and an escape from a life of seasonal and migrant farm

work.

These are familiar themes in many high schools. Yet here,

football occupies a particularly complicated position in a

community of 14,000 that exists in a kind of social time

warp.

In some ways, Belle Glade is a reminder of the

separate-but-equal days of the segregated South. Glades

Central High School is largely non-white, attracting 1,400

African-American, Haitian, Jamaican and Hispanic students.

The city's smaller private school, Glades Day School, is

predominantly white.

The city manager, like 60 percent of the voting-age

population, is black, but four of the five city council

members are white.

Belle Glade is also a symbol of the striking disparity in

wealth between the affluent eastern coast of Palm Beach

County and the poor rural areas 45 miles to the west.

On one hand, Palm Beach County has the state's highest home

values, with a median value of $134,099, according to a

2000 Census survey. Yet the shopping salons of West Palm

Beach might as well be in a different country, much less

county, from economically depressed Belle Glade and

Pahokee, where workers average $12,000 or less in yearly

salary, according to (Hank) Harper, the local state

representative.

" It's like a third world country out there, " he said.

The

Legacy of 'Shame'

It has been 41 years since CBS broadcast R. Murrow's

withering documentary " Harvest of Shame, " which depicted

the deplorable working and living conditions of migrant

workers in this region. Improvements in wages and housing

have occurred in recent decades, but the vast majority of

the top salaried and supervisory jobs in the local sugar

mills go to whites and Cuban- Americans, said Greg Schell,

managing attorney for Florida Legal Service's Migrant

Farmworker Justice Project. The cane harvest is automated

now. African-American and Caribbean workers are mostly

relegated to planting sugar cane and harvesting corn by

hand, and traveling 50 to 100 miles by bus to pick oranges

and tomatoes during other months, he said.

" In many respects, employment prospects for farm workers

are worse than they were at the time `Harvest of Shame' was

filmed, " Schell said.

While middle-class public housing exists, many blacks in

Belle Glade live in rooming houses with communal bathrooms

and kitchens that were built decades ago, mainly for single

guest workers. Santonio Holmes, the top receiver at Glades

Central, said he lived with eight other family members in

four rooms, with a bathroom down the hall. The families of

some players sleep in shifts because of a lack of bed

space, said Derrick Manning, the principal at Glades

Central.

In that light, football is embraced here as a harvest of

fame, athletic hope amid social hopelessness.

" I see it as my job to go out and make enough money to take

care of my mom, " Holmes said.

Willie Bueno, who is in his second year as head coach,

describes football not as a desperate way out of town, but

as a dependable opportunity to succeed. Current players

know that many of their predecessors have gone to college

and the N.F.L., and that the same is possible for them.

" They want to be part of it, " Bueno said. " It might be the

greatest thing they've ever been involved in. "

At least 8,000 fans are expected for Friday's home game

against Rockledge, the state's second-ranked team, and

those who cannot get into the stadium will watch from the

hoods of their cars.

The Burden of Expectations

Belle Glade's players are enrolled in what is called

" football class, " a recreation period during school in

which they watch film or lift weights, Bueno said. Florida

permits 20 days of spring practice for high school

football, which allows players to remain sharp in the

off-season. A number of them also participate in track and

field, another sport in which Glades Central is the

defending state champion. Fred , a running back and

kick returner, is the state's 100-meter sprint champion.

Linebacker Beckford has been a state wrestling

finalist. The team's top player is Ray Mc, a 6-foot-

4, 245-pound defensive end who has committed to play at the

University of Florida.

An enduring myth here is that the players are so fast

because they grow up chasing rabbits that sprint out of the

burning cane fields in the fall. A few players actually do

" run rabbits, " hunting them with a dog and a stick and

selling them for $2 or $3 apiece.

Expectations of victory are so high, according to Manning,

the principal, that a previous coach who lost a playoff

game in the early 1990's after blowing a three-touchdown

lead was not allowed to ride home on the team bus. Bueno

said the story has been embellished, but no one disagrees

that the home crowd can be tough.

" Sometimes you think the community is harder than the

coaches, " said Al Royal, a receiver and defensive back.

Said quarterback Curtis Holley, who has thrown 28 touchdown

passes and only 4 interceptions this season: " You don't

want the streak to end; you want to be able to pass the

torch. "

Inadvertently, football might provide a false hope for the

Glades Central players, said Schell of the Migrant

Farmworker Justice Project. Many athletes are unprepared

for the rigors of a college education, he said, and the

chances of reaching the pros are statistically slim.

Glades Central has experienced years of insufficient

funding and other resources, including a shortage of

quality teachers and low expectations from the county

school board, Harper, Schell and school officials said.

According to Lavoise , the vice principal, Glades

Central is the only high school in Palm Beach County ever

to have received an " F " grade from the state for its

standardized test scores.

The school has special challenges. Its students speak seven

languages. Many come from single-parent families and spend

much time unsupervised. It is a struggle for some kids just

to find clean clothes to wear to school, Manning said.

" If this was happening with white kids, someone would be

screaming and yelling, and someone would be listening, "

Schell said. " Some people are screaming, but they're being

ignored. They have football. You wonder if that somewhat

detracts people from looking at the underlying problems and

the low achievement. "

A Controversial Coach

Last year, Manning, 40, came here from Atlanta to serve as

principal. He is credited with a no-nonsense approach that

has created a safer environment in the school and a greater

urgency for academic achievement. Standardized test scores

have risen slightly, but, Manning said, " We have to create

that academic balance, so that the school can be noted for

something other than football and track. "

That balance, though, will have to be created without him.

Manning said he was planning after this school year to

return to Atlanta, where his wife lives. That may lend some

uncertainty to football, as well as to academics.

When he became principal, Manning decided to bolster the

teaching staff by requiring all assistant coaches to be

full-time instructors. Previously, a number were community

volunteers. This mandate upset a former coach, Mickey

Freeman, who resigned over the issue of naming his own

assistants a week before practice began last season.

Bueno, 33, was elevated from defensive coordinator to head

coach. This created tension in the black community. Freeman

is black, while Bueno is of Cuban descent. Not only that,

but the new coach had attended the rival Glades Day School.

Two assistant coaches brought in as teachers are white.

" The community was outraged, " Manning, who is black, said

of the decision to make Bueno head coach. At a contentious

meeting to announce the coaching change, Manning said,

" They wanted to barbecue me. "

Bueno has never lost in 27 games as head coach, yet some

black community leaders wanted him released even after he

won a state championship a year ago, Manning said.

" If we don't win the state championship again, they're

going to expect me to fire him, " Manning said.

He did not worry about community reaction, Bueno said, only

about winning and keeping his players' best interests in

mind.

" I haven't lost yet, " Bueno said. " They might string me up

if I do. I just keep winning, don't worry about it. One

time I thought I lost, but I woke up real quick. It was

only a dream. A nightmare. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/sports/ncaafootball/23BELL.html?ex=1007547

838 & ei=1 & en=12697619d2b2ce90

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