By Dan McGrath
Dusty Baker, Thomas Hearns, Matt Eberflus, Brent Seabrook and the Stanley Cup, Cardinal Blase Cupich, Lori Lightfoot, Len Kasper and Bob Brenly, Sen. Dick Durbin … well-known visitors to Leo High School have been fairly commonplace in recent years.
Distinguished as they are, none of those guests was received nearly as enthusiastically as filmmaker/social activist/New York Knicks fan Spike Lee, who visited Leo on Thursday, August 22.
Lee, in town for the Democratic National Convention, said he makes it a point to visit Rev. Michael Pfleger at St. Sabina whenever he’s in Chicago. He was amenable when Father Pfleger, a longtime friend and collaborator on the 2015 film “Chi-Raq,” suggested they stop by Leo.
“We were wrapping up a meeting, and I got a call from Father Pfleger at about ten to twelve,” Principal Shaka Rawls recalled. “He said, ‘I’ve got Spike Lee with me, and we’re coming by.’
“‘When?’”
“‘In 15 minutes.’”
An all-school assembly was hastily convened, and when Lee and Father Pfleger, entered the packed auditorium … you might have thought it was Michael Jordan or Steph Curry stopping by.
“I’m glad to be in a place where you guys are being educated,” Lee said, “because education is what it’s all about.”
Along with his multifaceted film work, Lee, 67, is an educator himself these days, proudly pointing out that he’s a tenured professor at New York University.
Lee traced his roots in filmmaking to Morehouse College – he graduated with a degree in mass communications in 1979 – and a gift from a friend from John Dewey High School in Brooklyn.
“I was back in New York the summer between my sophomore and junior year,” he recalled. “It was 1977 – terrible time. The city was bankrupt, there were no jobs, massive power outage in the middle of a brutal heat wave, Son of Sam …
“My friend had been given a Super 8 movie camera. She said, ‘I’m going to medical school, I’m not going to need this, why don’t you take it?’ So I did, and I went around New York all summer shooting stuff. When I got back to school I had all this footage. I showed it to the head of the media department and he said, ‘You ought to make a documentary.’ So I did, and I realized how much I enjoyed finding stories and telling them. That’s what got me started.”
The story was the backdrop for Lee’s message to his Leo audience: Find what it is you’re passionate about and commit to it.
“It’s not easy being a young brown or Black man in our society,” he said. Nodding toward Dr. Rawls and Father Pfleger, he added, “Listen to those who can help you. They want to help you.”
Wearing an Olympic warm-up jacket from the U.S women’s gymnastics team that he helps fund, Lee was cordial and open during his 20-minute talk and the Q&A that followed. He had a fist bump or a handshake for each student as they filed out of the auditorium, and he obligingly posed for a picture with anyone who wanted one, which was everyone.
To say he made an impression doesn’t say nearly enough.
“Just another day at Leo,” Dr. Rawls said.