Miles Douglas – He now knows his roots
The discovery of your roots in the past, gives meaning to the present and hope for the future. When I was a boy growing up in Box Hill, Victoria, my widowed mother was concerned that I could defend myself against rough boys like the fighting O’Gradys next door. So I went to boxing and wrestling classes at the YMCA.
The skills learned have been useful since with belligerent people, but ever since, I have loved wrestling. My young sons grew up learning from dad how to wrestle from noisy evenings in our lounge room, when every commercial break in a television program became the signal for a round on the carpet.
Olympic wrestling is lightning fast, skilful in the use of leverage and weight, and many people enjoy the Graeco-Roman wrestling in the Olympic Games. This is one of the sports of the original Olympics held 2,500 years ago, along with running and discus throwing, which have been incorporated into the modern Olympics.
When I go to lecture in the Emmanuel School of Religion in Tennessee, every year, I love to go down to the Field House, and to watch in the large gymnasium, the indoor sports program, including wrestling. For twenty years I have lectured at Emmanuel, a magnificent graduate school where I hold a position as Adjunct Professor of Christian Ministries.
One year, not long before the 2000 Sydney Olympics, I noticed on the Field House board an advertisement for students to try out before the American Olympic Wrestling coach. The date of his presence coincided with my lecturing so I went to watch. I was very interested in the American Olympic wrestling coach, a giant black man, Miles Douglas. As with many people, I discovered this man had a fascinating story.
Miles Douglas, was born fifty years earlier in poverty, to an alcoholic mother who lived on welfare in a black U.S. ghetto. When he was three, he was in bed with his mother, when their door was bashed down.
A stranger broke in, and while this three-year-old boy was lying in bed with his mother, his mother was brutally raped and stabbed sixteen times. He was unable to defend her. She survived, but stayed incapacitated. She was hospitalised and even after a long time was unable to care for her boy. So Miles Douglas went to live with his grandfather, a huge black man, 6” 5” tall and 240 lbs with a shaved head. He was a miner and a champion wrestler.
He taught his young grandson to wrestle and to exercise so that he grew fast and strong. His grandfather every night told him magical stories about his ancestors.
“I remember him saying we were descended from a huge man named Ash. He had been taken as a slave from a tribe in Africa called the Nuba. Grandfather said the Nuba had been black Pharaohs and magnificent warriors who coated themselves with ashes of a tree. He shaved his head in Nuba custom as handed down. It sounded great to me, but of course it was fantasy, a myth, too good to be true.”
As a boy, Miles Douglas dug coal, wrestled and went to church with his grand-daddy. Miles says “I remember toughness and devotion.” He won wrestling competitions, was taken in hand by a good coach, won a scholarship to university, graduated in Heath Sciences, and won University, State and National wrestling titles.
He was the only black wrestler in America thirty years ago to shave his head. He was fast, superbly fit, and a good tactician. “I never let my opponents hear me breathe or know I was in pain.” He won national and world titles, and became the American Olympic captain.
He retired with a lifetime record of 303 wins, 17 draws and only 7 defeats. Today he is the US Olympic coach, and Arizona University Coach. Researching the history of wrestling, he found that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were wrestlers, as was Genghis Khan and General Norman Schwartzkopf. The throne of Japan was once decided by wrestling. He was also interested in his ancestors.
He found that his great, great grandfather was a giant Nuba slave owned by a sheriff called Douglas. So he was called Ash Douglas. He made up the stories about Nuba.
Then in the mid 1970’s, a German photographer published a book of photographs of a remote tribe in the Sudan. The book was called “The Last of the Nuba”.
Here were photographs of huge black men, with shaved heads, shoulders covered with white ash, grouped in pairs, wrestling. The Nuba find their place in society by their prowess as wrestlers. At every victory they receive a branch of wood, half of which is stored to be burnt at their funeral, and the other half is burnt and the ash dusted over his head and shoulders before the next tournament. The ash is the symbol of the strength of the tree entering the man. They wrestled for the spiritual vitality of the tribe.
Miles Douglas looked at the photographs and read the text amazed. “That’s the ash. It’s real. It was all real. Grand-daddy was right. It’s real, all real!” Miles Douglas life took on new meaning. His discovery of his roots in the past gave his present meaning and his future hope.
Now here is a remarkable co-incidence. I have supported the work of the Sudan United Mission for more than forty years. This mission works in many places in Central Africa, including the mountains of the Nuba. After speaking at an Annual National Conference they asked me what gift they could give me, and I mentioned the book, “The Last of the Nuba.” There was no copy available in Australia, but one was found in the Sudan.
So I possess probably the only copy in Australia about the Nuba people near Khartoum, Sudan.
Like Miles Douglas, each person must find his spiritual roots. Finding your past gives meaning to your present and hope to your future.
REV THE HON. DR GORDON MOYES, A.C., M.L.C..