Sherialyn Byrdsong is speaking softly.
She is telling the story, as she has over and over again, of how a white supremacist murdered her husband, former Northwestern University basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong. She calmly describes the hail of gunfire, her husband writhing on the ground, the grim looks on the doctors’ faces when they told her the bullets were the exploding kind that rip internal organs to shreds.
It is the most painful kind of story, but Sherialyn Byrdsong feels she must repeat it to all who will listen. And that is why she is at Elmhurst College on a Friday afternoon speaking to students, faculty and staff in the sweet drawl of her native Georgia.
She needs no vocal crescendos, no arm waving, no Power Point presentations to command attention. The power of her words keeps the listeners riveted in their seats, fingers wiping away tears.
Yet by the end of her story, Byrdsong has everyone smiling. For even though she has every reason to despair, every reason to curse America’s lingering racism and rampant violence, she does not. Instead Byrdsong, 46, talks about hope and dreams and faith in God.
This eternal optimism has kept her and her family strong and allowed her to campaign tirelessly to prevent other kids from turning into hate-filled killers. She has created the Ricky Byrdsong Foundation to help young people, made dozens of speeches to school, church and professional groups, and traveled from the White House to Hollywood to campaign for new hate-crime and gun-control laws.
Along the way, she has seen some victories. In January she had the satisfaction of learning that Matt Hale, the racist whose disciple murdered her husband, was arrested and charged with conspiring to kill a federal judge. And she has seen a tough new Illinois law go into effect that makes hate-group leaders like Hale responsible for the violent acts of their followers.
“She’s an extraordinary individual who has taken personal tragedy and transformed it into a force for social change,” says state Sen. Jeff Schoenberg (D-Evanston), who worked with Byrdsong to pass the hate-crimes law. “She possesses a quiet personal strength that others draw from and find inspiring.”
Four summers ago, Byrdsong had no desire to become such a public crusader. She was happy to be a stay-at-home mom living, as she describes it, the American dream.
She had just celebrated her 19th wedding anniversary with Ricky, her high school sweetheart in Atlanta. Together they lived with their three children — 12-year-old Sabrina, 10-year-old Kelley and 8-year-old Ricky Jr. — in a tree-lined Skokie neighborhood. They belonged to a church they adored. The family was excited about Ricky’s new job as vice president of community affairs for the Aon Corp. (NU had fired him in February 1997; he began as vice president of community affairs in November 1997.)
“We were on top of the world,” she says.
Then, on July 2, 1999, Byrdsong’s American dream turned into a nightmare. On a sunny, pleasant Friday evening, she took her kid sister, Jocelyn, out in the family van for a quick driving lesson. Ricky decided to play basketball and jog around the neighborhood with the kids. A block from their home, 21-year-old Benjamin Smith drove up and shot Ricky in the back, apparently simply because he was black.
When Sherialyn Byrdsong returned home 15 minutes later, she heard Sabrina screaming, “Daddy’s been shot!” She raced to where Ricky lay bleeding on the ground and rode in the ambulance with him to the hospital, holding his hand and praying for him to live. But the doctors could not save him. Sherialyn wept by his side, realizing she would never again see his big smile, hear his goofy jokes or witness his willingness to help everyone he met.
“My dream just came to a halt,” she says.
28 others shot at
During that weekend Smith, a member of a racist group called the World Church of the Creator, shot at 28 other blacks, Jews and Asians, killing a Korean graduate student and wounding nine others, in Illinois and Indiana. When police closed in on him near Downstate Salem on July 4, Smith killed himself.
As mourners filled her home after Ricky’s murder, Byrdsong wrestled with her deepest beliefs.
“I was in shock, but I knew I had to answer for myself and my children some difficult questions,” she recalls. “Was I going to allow myself to become a bitter, angry person whose heart is filled with hate? Was I going to become a victim or a victor? I decided I could become a victor and overcome hatred with good.”
Byrdsong decided to create the Ricky Byrdsong Foundation with the help of family, friends and Ricky’s employers at Aon Corp. The foundation’s mission: to arrest the growing epidemic of hate by and against youth and to promote reconciliation, champion diversity and continue Ricky’s legacy of community service.
In the summer, the foundation sponsors The Ricky Byrdsong Not Just Basketball Camp where middle-school students from all around the Chicago area learn to play together and talk together. Byrdsong, who played forward for the University of Pennsylvania varsity women’s team, exhorts the 40 kids as they pass basketballs back and forth, from black kid to Jewish kid to Hispanic kid. In addition to shooting hoops, they discuss diversity and visit Chinatown, Manny’s Deli on South Jefferson, the DuSable Museum of African American History and the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum.
“You’ve got to believe that the experiences kids have shape their philosophies,” Byrdsong says. “I just know what we’re doing is planting seeds in these kids so if they’re exposed to hate later in their lives, they can say `no’ to it.”
The foundation also plants seeds of tolerance through a community service program for students at Chute Middle School in Evanston and an annual corporate camp where teens from diverse backgrounds spend time with employers learning about jobs. In March the foundation is starting Super Saturday Enrichment to bring high school students from Evanston and Skokie together to perform volunteer projects, visit different ethnic neighborhoods and learn about leadership and non-violence.
“I try to make a difference, one person and one place at a time,” Byrdsong says. “If everyone does their part, we can raise a generation of people who can live in this world together.”
To pay for the foundation’s activities, she launched the annual Ricky Byrdsong Memorial 5K Race Against Hate, which attracts thousands of runners and walkers to Evanston each June. In three years, the Race Against Hate has raised $135,000.
The former full-time homemaker has gradually learned to become a forceful public speaker. When the Ku Klux Klan rallied in Skokie two years ago, Byrdsong preached harmony and understanding to a counter-rally of 1,400 people. She also traveled to the White House as a guest of President Clinton to lobby for stronger hate-crimes laws and has appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Today,” “700 Club” and “Leeza Gibbons.”
This public persona does not come easily to Byrdsong, who says she relaxes by reading the Bible and playing piano and golf.
“Sherialyn had always been the behind-the-scenes person, and now she’s out on the forefront,” says Carlton Evans, a friend of the Byrdsongs since high school and the foundation’s director of youth development. “To carry on Coach’s [Byrdsong’s] legacy, I think she realizes to speak out and reach people is vital.”
Reaching out to family
She starts with reaching out to her own family. She frequently travels back to Atlanta to visit her extended families. She makes time to hold daily prayer sessions with Sabrina, Kelley and Ricky Jr. and to volunteer as an assistant coach for their basketball teams. “She’s involved on every level [of her children’s lives],” says her pastor, the Rev. Lyle Foster of The Worship Center in Evanston. “She’s very intent on making sure they know their mom is available.”
Although her children do not talk much about their father’s murder anymore, Byrdsong knows she must help them through their lingering grief.
“I bring their father up continually and remind them of the kind of man he was, the expectations he had of them and his love for them,” Byrdsong says. “I don’t take lightly what happened to us. I just try to get them to see that they’re not alone in trying to overcome some adversity in life. We all have some mountain we have to climb.”
Byrdsong continues to climb her own mountain by telling audiences about what happened to her family that horrible July evening.
By the time she finishes her speech at Elmhurst College, she is smiling. When the audience rises to complete their program by singing James Weldon Johnson’s spiritual, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” she joins them. Although they have the words in front of them, most of the singers stammer and stumble through the intricate melody.
But Byrdsong does not falter. Her voice remains firm and clear, singing every word with confidence:
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“Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.”
