On first appearance Chris looked like he would make for a good security guard, he was big, he was black, he had gold teeth, his eyes told you that he knew something about the streets – in Cambridge, Mokey had him and JG stand at the door of the bar and check everyone coming in, in Miami and Baton Rouge, Curtis sat him at the door, he was the muscle that made sure no one got out of line, in Chicago, he escorted 4 scared teenage girls and hector past the sentries, men and women, twenty and then thirty and then fifty of them, black like him, who guarded the hallways of Robert Taylor Housing Projects with its piss and bags of crack the size of grapefruits, up the steps, past the young men and women who rolled dice while they guarded them, who wanted to know if we were with a church and let us pass when Big Bun told them we were from Mississippi and there to teach kids math.
When I first met Chris at Brinkley, he was in 6th grade and in the Algebra Project. He was clumsy, nerdy, big, but not big bun, more soft then hard, Bear was the one Taba had told me about, the leader of the pack, and Keke, the little one with all the heart. Taba sat in their classrooms for two years and sometimes helped and sometimes slept, and sometimes Mrs Moss would let him take the boys into the field with the boxing gloves to handle their business. The matches were set, Keke and Alvin, Chris and Bear. No one wanted to box Bear, Chris was almost his size, at first he didn’t want to either, he had to work himself up to do it, he stepped into the ring with his glasses on, Aye yo, take your glasses off, he handed them to Taba, his classmates were the audience, they squared up, he hid behind the gloves, he threw a punch, they started to go back and forth, Bear peppered him up, Aye yo Big Bun, what’s up with Bear? I knew the story and would mess with him, he would frown for a minute like he didn’t know what I was talking about, Yeah, I’ll put it on him now.
I got to know and love Chris over the next ten years, watch him become Big Bun, go from giving lunch away to Jessica to calling himself gorgeous and becoming confident in his charisma with women, go from being afraid to stand in front of groups to being able to connect with all kinds of people, from being afraid to box Bear to being the undisputed champ of the neighborhood – Yo you shoulda seen what your boy Bun did last night, Albert who was to Big Bun as Bundini Brown was to Ali.
Big Bun is a force. Stubborn, strong willed, I got no understanding, he would often say, and if he got no understanding you couldn’t move him. Big Bun was inquisitive, he had lots of questions and was looking, not necessarily for answers, but for information, he wanted to make sense of things for himself, he listened and let things soak in until he got understanding, and then he was ready to move.
We spent a lot of time moving, becoming close on the road and our many travels together, I was a teacher in his classroom, he came to Graphing Calculator workshops on Saturday, he was a good student who did his class work, he passed the statewide Algebra 1 exam, we drove to the delta and he did workshops to help other students pass the exam, he came to Olive Branch and was part of a group of young people from around the country that imagined they were going to do something together that would make the world different, he made the drive to North Carolina Central University, after we spent the night binding books, the next summer to Cambridge, two full days of driving, we bet a hundred dollars that he would sleep only when I slept, he lost in North Carolina and never payed me. On the Spring Break Tours, he held down the back of the bus, from Jackson, to Bessemer, to Weldon, North Carolina, to DC, where my dad made Chris and me and Black and the 40 of us from Mississippi do the prime number rap for John Kerry and a bunch of stuffy white folk on Capitol Hill, to South Carolina to Savanah Georgia and back to Mississippi and next year we did it all over again, this time to Arkansas, to Atlanta, to Weldon, to South Carolina to Savanah to Orlando – we got into it in Orlando, whatever I was saying he had no understanding, later that night I found him and JG and whoever else drinking in the hotel room, they told me a couple years later that Talib was also there hiding in the bathroom. He got suspended from YPP, it didn’t take him long to come back, the next two Summers he was in Cambridge, and then two more with me in Chicago helping to get YPP off the ground.
In many ways Big Bun held me down. He was always there and had earned the right to call on me for whatever he needed. He would tell me the same, that he had my back, whatever I needed.
In his words:
My name is Christopher Adagbonyin , I am 23 years old and a 10 year member of The Young People’s Project. The road to becoming a member of The Young People’s Project started when I was in sixth grade in Bob Moses’s Algebra Project class. Two years later I became a member of The Young People’s Project, which by then had just been founded by Omo Moses. Over the years I have held a numbers of titles within YPP . First I began as a participant in YPP’s Saturday workshops, these where used to engage us into critical thinking activities and also give us a chance to build a relationship with then YPP staff. A year later I got a chance to become one of the facilitators. This gave me a chance to do for my younger peers what Omo and other YPP elders had done for me. This is when I adopted the “ each one teach one “ attitude. Over the next three years I became a manager, I now helped to engage facilitators into critical thinking skills , and began to be more concerned about their surroundings. I then was put in a position where I was now training folks to be MLWS ( math Literacy workers) . This involved a lot of traveling, that eventually opened my mind about the way that people lived in other places, how to embrace their cultures and their ideas. I am now carrying another title, which proves to be the most difficult of all ( youth organizer). I know that with the support that I have been getting over the years from YPP, this challenge will be accomplished.
When I think of him, I think of the work he wanted to do and did, the work he was aware needed doing but hadn’t gotten to, the work that he had begun that he wasn’t able to finish.
Chris wanted to live for something. Was looking for the movement and his place in it. He and Albert would joke about being Curtis and Hollis, naa, Curtis and John, naa not Curtis and John, or King and Abernathy, naa, King and Lowry, naa not King and Abernathy, Bob and Dave, naa, not Bob and Dave.
Chris and Albert.
Jim Campbell who spent time with him wrote:
There are events in this life that
sear into a spot, deep within us, where
pain will reside for the remainder of
our lives - this is one of those events !
And, at that instance of catastrophe,
we feel the urge to yell to the world,
to everyone, " Enough ! Stop ! This
is too much to bear ! I give up!" But
our 'INNER RESOLVE' intervenes,
through the outrage, the tears, the
hurt , the anger, the bitter disappoint -
ment and says , "Turn your 'mourning
energy' into 'struggle energy'. Redouble
your efforts so as to honor the dreams
and unfinished struggle of a fallen
comrade!"
Let all of us listen to our "INNER
RESOLVE" and honor Chris by re -
dedicating our effort, our discipline,
our determination and our continuing
growth and development in conscious -
ness and capability.
Christopher Otasowie Adagbonyin,
'Big Bun', is YPP.
For the rest of my life, I will honor his struggle to become a man in a country that didn’t want him to live to be a man. What Chris faced, many of you still face, today, tomorrow, what young black men in communities around the country face, Chris grew up in or in close proximity to the streets and the reality that your life is worth very little to people who look like you, and less to those who don’t and the systems which have little use for you are waiting to throw you away or have you thrown away by your own people.
Chris understood that he had to rescue himself and as many of his people. He and Albert would tell me when we were on the road finding our folk that they were ready to die for this, I was thinking naa ya’ll don’t need to die, you got kids. What they were really telling me was that they were ready to live for something. They wanted their life to have meaning and purpose.
Jim wrote:
I think he would want us to honor him
by 'Turning our Mourning Energy into
Struggle Energy' , by returning to work
rededicated to the completion of our
task. At this time, our practice is his
living memorial and monument. Later,
we can all create a memorial statement
in an appropriate, objective expression,
in a form too soon, at this time, to
understand.
Please let Chris' family, friends and
comrades in the Young Peoples Project
know that I loved him, respected him
admired him and will always be inspired
by his life's example. He was a noble and,
remains, an inspirational young man.
Big Bun, Albert, Omo and Black Jesus talking about life on the way home from New Orleans...
